In February, Martha Hawks became the Southeast’s first recipient of the Medtronic Micra AV, the latest version of the tiny pacemaker that Vanderbilt Heart and Vascular Institute began testing in a clinical trial in 2014. The FDA approved the latest device in January.

She has built a reputation for volunteering for complex tasks, not because they are part of her job description but because of her passion for innovation and patient care.

Patients discharged from the hospital with acute heart failure have higher one-year mortality rates in regions with low income or greater income inequality, according to a new global study whose authors include Sean Collins, MD, MSc, professor of Emergency Medicine at Vanderbilt.

In the first such procedures in Tennessee, Vanderbilt University Medical Center has successfully used technology to bring two donor hearts that stopped beating back to life before transplanting them into patients.

His beloved Carroll Academy Jaguars and Lady Jaguars honor him with a message on their shirts: "Donate Life."

A Polygenic Risk Score — a genetic assessment that doctors have hoped could predict coronary heart disease (CHD) in patients — has been found not to be a useful predictive biomarker for disease risk.