Alberto Interian, Jr.

MD, Professor, Cardiologist, and Medical Director

University of Miami School of Medicine

United States

Professional Summary

Dr. Alberto Interian Jr. was born in Cuba. His parents migrated from Cuba to the United Stated in 1957 when he was only two years-old. The reason for the migration was business. His grandfather had been a very successful businessman in Cuba in the dairy business and wanted to establish a similar business in United States. However, it turned out that he never got to establish any type of dairy business, and got into the restaurant business.Dr. Interian attended Riverside Elementary and later Kinloch Junior High School. He always envisioned himself becoming a physician, particularly a neurosurgeon. He was always very strong in science and mathematics. He played the violin for approximately eight years, and was concertmaster at Coral Park Senior High School, from where he graduated and obtained his high school diploma. During his early high school and college years, he worked in his father restaurant and made extra money as a photographer covering bar mitzvahs, weddings, and other types of events. While attending Miami Dade Junior College at night, he worked fulltime at Southeast Mortgage in the special service department and was offered a promotion as a loan officer. At the same time he made the decision to continue his childhood goals after graduating from Miami Dade with an Associate in Arts. He was accepted for the third and fourth year of undergraduate work at the University of Miami on an honor scholarship, which basically covered most of his tuition, and continued to work part-time at Southeast Mortgage.In May of 1978, he graduated with a Bachelor in Science, with a major in chemistry, and a minor in biology, cum laude. He was accepted into the University of Miami Medical School in 1978 and graduated in May of 1982. During his last year of medical school, he did an externship in the Mayo and Cleveland Clinic and found to his great dismay that he really was not interested in neurosurgery. By default, he did internal medicine and graduated with top honors in 1985. While doing internal medicine, he thought he would do gastroenterology, but again a similar situation happened during his third year of internal medicine. While rotating through gastroenterology, he decided that this was not the subspecialty he cared for. It was too late for Dr. Interian to apply to cardiology, which had been his second choice. However, by luck of the draw the fellow who was supposed to do the Electrophysiology rotation was unable to, and by default, Dr. Interian did the cardiac Electrophysiology rotation before general cardiology (extremely unusual, regular cardiology is always done before a specialized rotation). He then completed the other required two years in cardiology, graduating on June 1988. Dr. Interian joined the Division of Cardiology faculty in the Department of Medicine at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Hospital on July 1988 as an Assistant Professor and Director of Electrophysiology. Interventional Electrophysiology had not been practiced up to that time. Certain people in Europe had started doing animal work in radiofrequency ablation. Dr. Interian picked-up on that and became self-trained in Interventional Electrophysiology; early on doing some animal work in dogs and later putting together equipment with the help of biomed and radioshack a research protocol under an FDA IDE and started performing radiofrequency ablation with homemade catheters done by Will Webster. Interventional Electrophysiology climbed to its current state with multiple catheters, different generators, different mapping devices, etc.Five years later in 1993, he was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor. On January 2001 he was again promoted to Associate Chief of the Division of Cardiology. At an early age in his academic career, he achieved the highest goal of university status rank becoming tenured Professor of Medicine of the University of Miami on July 1998. Six years later, from September 2004 to November 2005, Dr. Interian held the position of Interim-Chief in the Division of Cardiology at the University Of Miami.One of Dr. Interian’s dreams came true on March 2005, when he achieved to establish the Mercy Arrhythmia & Syncope Center in cooperation with University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. This center treats patients that suffer from cardiac arrhythmias and recurrent episodes of passing out. Throughout his career, Dr. Interian’s research and clinical interests have focused on cardiac rhythm disturbances, sudden cardiac death and ablation of cardiac arrhythmias. He and his colleagues have contributed to the knowledge base in cardiac electrophysiology through studies in clinical electrophysiology and hearts in experimental models of abnormal conditions. The studies have ranged from the electrophysiology of single cells and ion channels to multicenter clinical trials. He and his colleagues have done extensive writing and research in cardiac electrophysiology and integrated the alterations observed in cardiac rhythm disturbances with their treatment. In addition to his research activities, Dr. Interian has been responsible for the clinical programs in cardiovascular medicine on the University of Miami Medical Campus and educational programs for postgraduate training in cardiovascular medicine and electrophysiology.

Skills

Specialization

Cardiac Electrophysiology, Medical Doctor