Background
Before coming to St. David’s Medical Center, Dr. Natale held a position at Cleveland Clinic’s Cardiovascular Medicine Department from 2000 to 2008. During this time, he served as the Section Head of the Department of Cardiac Pacing and Electrophysiology, as well as the Medical Director of the Clinic’s Atrial Fibrillation Center.
While serving at Cleveland Clinic, Dr. Natale received an appointment to the Task Force on Atrial Fibrillation by the Food and Drug Administration to research, standardize, and advance atrial fibrillation procedures.
One of Dr. Andrea Natale’s most notable accomplishments in medicine was the development of a vein-ablation system that uses circumferential ultrasound to address atrial fibrillation. He pioneered this groundbreaking procedure and performed it on the first five patients who underwent this treatment.
Other accomplishments of Dr. Natale’s include developing the catheter-based treatments for atrial fibrillation and being the first U.S. electrophysiologist to successfully treat a clinical patient via ablation that used percutaneous epicardial radiofrequency. Dr. Natale also has a patent for an atrial fibrillation device.
Dr. Andrea Natale was awarded the Frist Humanitarian Award in 2012 in recognition of the humanitarian efforts and achievements of one physician who demonstrates remarkable concern for the welfare and happiness of patients and has performed extraordinary acts of kindness, commitment to community service, and whose contributions may be overshadowed due to personal modesty and genuine humility. He has also been named as one of the “50 best Cleveland Clinic Doctors. Ever” (2011) and one of the “Best Doctors: in Austin by Austin Monthly Magazine six straight years (2015-2020)
Dr. Andrea Natale holds faculty appointments at Stanford University and Case Western Reserve University. He is regularly asked to lecture at universities, ground rounds, conferences, and symposiums, having spoken at more than 400 events to date. Other past faculty appointments include positions at the Aerospace Research Center of Italy’s Air Force and the University of Kentucky, Lexington.
Dr. Natale’s research can be found in hundreds of published articles, and he sits on the editorial board of several medical journals. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Interventional Cardiac Electrophysiology. He also founded the Journal of Atrial Fibrillation, an open-access journal with a special focus on physician and patient education.
Dr. Andrea Natale graduated from medical school with honors in 1985 and has been practicing, researching, and treating patients with cardiac arrhythmias ever since.