Bio
Dr. Maron is the C.F. Rehnborg Professor of Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine. He received his undergraduate degree from Stanford and his medical degree from the University of Southern California. He trained in internal medicine at UCLA. He returned to Stanford where he was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar, a preventive cardiology fellow at the Stanford Prevention Research Center, and remained at Stanford to complete a cardiology fellowship. After a brief stint in private practice in Santa Monica, he joined the faculty at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine as Assistant Professor and Director of Preventive Cardiology in 1993, and rose through the ranks to Professor. In 2014 he returned to Stanford where he serves as Chief of SPRC.
Dr. Maron sees patients in the Preventive Cardiology Clinic. His research interests include primary and secondary prevention of coronary artery disease. As a fellow at SPRC, he was introduced to clinical research as a member of the team that conducted the Stanford Coronary Risk Intervention Project. He applied lessons learned from that experience to the design of the landmark COURAGE trial, for which he served as the chairman of the optimal medical therapy committee. He went on to be principal investigator and co-chair of the ISCHEMIA trial, an NIH-funded study comparing the effectiveness of two initial management strategies – invasive (optimal medical therapy plus cardiac catheterization and revascularization with stents or bypass surgery) versus conservative (optimal medical therapy alone) – in approximately 5,000 patients with stable coronary artery disease and at least moderate ischemia on a stress test. There was no overall statistical difference in major clinical endpoints in ISCHEMIA, but patients with angina had better symptom relief with invasive management. COURAGE and ISCHEMIA have had a major impact on the management of stable coronary disease around the world, with both trials emphasizing the importance of lifestyle and appropriate medications to control risk factors and prevent heart attacks and death.
Dr. Maron’s current research involves early detection of subclinical coronary disease in people without a diagnosis of heart disease. One method that he is investigating is using an artificial intelligence algorithm that he helped develop to measure calcified plaque in coronary arteries from a chest CT scan done for other purposes. His team has shown that detection and notification of patients and their clinicians about the presence of coronary calcium dramatically increases the use of statins as recommended by guidelines. Another method he is investigating is the use of noninvasive coronary CT angiograms to guide the management of patients at increased risk of heart disease as compared with strictly relying on risk factors. With these projects he hopes to transform the methods commonly used to prevent heart attacks.
Dr. Maron is president-elect of the American Society for Preventive Cardiology.
