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Savitri Fedson, MD MA

Director, Houston Heart Initiative
Michael E DeBakey VA Medical Center
Houston, Texas, United States

Savitri Fedson, MD, MA, is a Professor of Medicine and Clinical Ethics at the Michael E. DeBakey Houston VA Medical Center and the Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Baylor College of Medicine. She completed a BA and MA at the University of Chicago in Intellectual History, and then received her MD from the University of Virginia. She went on to complete her residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Chicago and served as Chief Resident at John Stroger Cook County Hospital in Chicago. She then completed a fellowship in Cardiology at the University of Chicago and did advanced training in heart failure/transplantation at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Fedson is also a graduate of the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics Program at the University of Chicago.
Dr. Fedson is the medical director and founder of the advanced heart failure/transplant program at the DeBakey VA, and serves as the Chair of the Ethics Committee.
She has been involved in the care of patients for over 20 years and is an active member of the ACC, ISHLT and HFSA and has been a contributing writer to national practice guidelines related to transplantation, mechanical circulatory support and heart failure.
Her research interests are in patient reported outcomes with decision making and the impact of frailty and physical conditioning in heart failure. Dr. Fedson also has interests in the ethics of scare resource allocation, the intersection of individual autonomy and public health, and patients’ decisions to discontinue device support.
She has been a speaker at national and international heart failure and transplant meetings on topics such the integration of palliative care in cardiovascular disease, ethical dilemmas in candidacy for heart and multiorgan transplantation, xenotransplantation and donation after cardiac death, and in device deactivation for mechanical circulatory support.

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