CardioExchange Archive

Northwestern University has dismissed the cardiologist who raised troubling questions about Patrick McCarthy, its star cardiac surgeon.

The controversy began in 2008 when Nalini Rajamannan, an assistant professor of medicine, accused McCarthy of implanting in one of her patients an experimental annuloplasty ring, the Myxo ring, manufactured by Edwards Lifesciences. McCarthy, who had invented the device, implanted it without obtaining the patient’s consent, and Edwards was accused of circumventing the FDA approval process. The incident eventually led to investigations by the FDA and a U.S. senate committee, and was covered extensively by TheHeart.Org, the Wall Street Journal, and the Chicago Tribune.

Prior to firing Rajamannan, Northwestern had eliminated her clinical privileges and turned down her application for tenure, according to an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required to read full article). Northwestern claims Rajamannan was dismissed only because she had been denied tenure. Rajamannan, however, contends that she was fired because she uncovered evidence from a patient’s ECG recording that one of McCarthy’s patients had an MI shortly after surgery, contrary to McCarthy’s published claim that no patients had had an MI.

Rajamannan told the Chronicle that when she first spoke about the incident with Robert Bonow, who was then the chief of cardiology at Northwestern, he said to her: “You don’t cross Pat McCarthy…. We’re going to separate you, so don’t pursue this.” Bonow told the Chronicle he did not want to respond “without first consulting his lawyer.”