Charles Swerdlow

Dr. Swerdlow is a cardiac electrophysiologist specializing in the care of patients with cardiac arrhythmias. In addition to consultative and long-term patient care, his clinical interests focus in two areas: (1) catheter ablation of atrial fibrillation and other complex arrhythmias; and (2) implanted cardiac electronic devices including implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs), cardiac pacemakers, cardiac resynchronization (bi-ventricular) devices, and implantable monitoring devices for heart failure.

Before moving to Los Angeles, Dr. Swerdlow served as Director of the Clinical Electrophysiology Laboratory and Director of the Cardiac Arrhythmia Study Unit at Stanford University. His previous work includes design and testing of algorithms used by ICDs to detect and differentiate arrhythmias, use of mathematical modeling to optimize electoral pulses delivered by ICDs, and development and validation of a safe and effective clinical method to determine the minimum shock strength that defibrillates the heart.

Presently, Dr. Swerdlow is an attending physician at Cedars-Sinai and Clinical Professor of Medicine at UCLA. He is a Fellow of the Heart Rhythm Society, American Heart Association, and American College of Cardiology. In addition, Dr. Swerdlow is nationally recognized for his research in clinical application of engineering principles to implantable cardiac electronic devices. According to US News and World Report, he was voted by his peers as one of the top 4 electrophysiologists in California.

He has designed and tested algorythms used by ICDs to detect and differentiate arrhythmias, used mathematical modeling to optimize electrical pulses delivered by ICDs and developed and validated a safe and effective clinical method to determine the minimum shock strength that defibrillates the heart.

As of 2011, Dr. Swerdlow was the author of 117 peer-reviewed, original scientific papers, 140 peer-reviewed abstracts, 50 chapters and review papers, and 17 issued patents. He also serves on the editorial boards of 3 cardiac electrophysiology journals.