George Wieselthaler MD

Dr. Georg Wieselthaler, a heart and lung surgeon, is director of the Heart Transplant and Mechanical Circulatory Support Program at the UCSF Heart and Vascular Center. He is one of the world's leading experts in mechanical circulatory support for end-stage heart failure patients and has performed and supervised more than 350 heart transplants. He also has extensive expertise in implanting ventricular assist devices (VAD) that help failing hearts pump blood.

Wieselthaler, a native of Austria, earned a medical degree at the University of Vienna where he completed a residency and surgical training. He also completed advanced training in transplantation at the Vienna Heart Transplant and Vienna Lung Transplant programs. Wieselthaler has been involved in the development of ventricular assist pumps and a total artificial heart. He has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals and has trained surgeons worldwide in implantation techniques and the use of VADs. He is member of national and international medical societies and is president-elect of the International Society for Rotary Blood Pumps. He is a member of the board of the European Society for Artificial Organs and former president of the Austrian Society for Implantology and Tissue Integrated Prosthesis. In April 2011, he was named director of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation. Wieselthaler is professor of surgery at UCSF