Dr. Theodore Abraham is a cardiologist who cares for adults with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), a condition that causes heart muscle to thicken so that the heart has to work harder than it should. HCM often goes undiagnosed and is usually inherited, so Abraham has a particular interest in evaluating people with suspected HCM as well as family members of patients with the condition.
Abraham employs various types of heart imaging to discern whether athletes whose hearts appear abnormal on diagnostic images have an underlying heart problem or are actually normal. He also uses strain echocardiography – a method of measuring deformed heart muscle – for early diagnosis, monitoring disease progression and predicting a variety of cardiac diseases, particularly those of the heart muscle and those affecting athletes.
Abraham directs the UCSF Adult Cardiac Echocardiography Lab at the Parnassus campus and co-directs UCSF's HCM program, a designated center of excellence. His research on HCM focuses on risk prediction and early diagnosis.
Abraham earned his medical degree from the University of Mumbai. He then completed a residency in internal medicine at Wake Forest School of Medicine, where he also completed a research fellowship in echocardiography. He completed additional fellowships in clinical cardiology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and advanced echocardiography at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
Before joining UCSF, Abraham was a professor of medicine, radiology and radiological science at Johns Hopkins Medicine, where he also served as associate dean for research.
Abraham has received numerous research grants and awards for his work. He is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology and American Society of Echocardiography. He is a member of the American Heart Association, where he serves on its councils on clinical cardiology and basic cardiovascular sciences.
Abraham is on the editorial boards of the Journal of the American Society of Echocardiography; Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Cardiovascular Imaging; and Circulation: Cardiovascular Imaging, a journal of the American Heart Association. He also serves as an expert on HCM for the British Medical Journal.
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