About
Dr. Benharash specializes in the treatment of acquired cardiac diseases in adults. He has an active practice that ranges from traditional cardiac operations to minimally invasive, hybrid, and catheter-based therapies to treat heart disease. He is the director of the Extracorporeal Life Support (ECMO) Program at UCLA Health and has made great strides in making this technology widely available throughout Southern California. More recently, he has brought minimally invasive arrhythmia surgery to UCLA, a method that reduces pain and blood loss while being highly effective in the treatment of atrial fibrillation.
His research interests include health services research using national databases, with a focus on cardiovascular outcomes. Dr. Benharash's laboratory is heavily involved with the development of noninvasive physiologic sensors as well as the design of physics-based models for virtual surgery. Dr. Benharash believes that patients will continue to greatly benefit from innovations that span multiple disciplines. His research group, CORELAB, is nationally recognized for training future leaders in academic surgery and for its contributions to unmasking disparities in access to quality healthcare across the U.S. He has published over 400 manuscripts, many in high-impact journals.
Dr. Benharash earned his undergraduate, graduate, and medical degrees from UCLA. He completed general surgery training at Harbor-UCLA and spent time at Stanford University performing leading-edge research in stem cell therapies for cardiovascular applications. Dr. Benharash returned to UCLA to complete specialized training in cardiothoracic surgery and has remained on the faculty since. He has been the principal investigator on several major grants funded by the United States Department of Defense and is a co-investigator on several interdisciplinary projects for discovery in heart disease. Dr. Benharash has received a teaching award every year that he has served on the faculty at UCLA and was recently honored by the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA with the Kaiser Permanente Award for Excellence in Education. He also received a 2015 UCLA Health Teaching Humanism Award. His work has been widely published, and he is a member of numerous professional organizations, including the Society of University Surgeons and the Society of Thoracic Surgeons. He is currently serving as the President of the California Society of Thoracic Surgeons.