Kumaraswamy Nanthakumar, MD, FRCPC

Dr. Nanthakumar is a Clinical Cardiologist and Cardiac Electrophysiologist. After receiving his MD at the University of Toronto in 1995, he completed his training in Internal Medicine and Cardiology in Toronto. He subsequently completed his cardiac electrophysiology training at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he studied the mechanisms of cardiac fibrillation. His clinical expertise is focused on devices in heart failure and performing catheter ablation of ventricular tachycardia and supra ventricular tachycardias

The most common cause of sudden cardiac death is ventricular fibrillation. Defibrillation by delivering high-energy shocks has been a successful way of treating this problem. However, providing this therapy to patients and successfully discharging them from the hospital have been a significant challenge. Moreover, patients for whom defibrillation can be offered can have significant issues of re-fibrillation; this interrupts resuscitation efforts, prolongs the period of time with no blood flowing to the brain, leading to a poor outcome. The patients that are treated currently with implantable devices only make up a small fraction of patients at risk who die annually from VF. This arrhythmia and the mechanism that maintains it in humans are difficult to study due to ethical concerns. The objective of my research program is to study and understand the electrical short circuit that maintains arrhythmias, and the mechanisms and factors that modulate them. My research specifically focuses on the modulation of cardiac arrhythmias in various ways, including the application of renal sympathetic denervation, metabolic modulator and RyR2 stabilizer.

For a list of Dr. Nanthakumar's publications, please visit PubMed or Scopus.


Active Staff, Toronto General Hospital and Mount Sinai Hospital
Graduate Appointment, Institute of Medical Science