Dr. John D. Puskas is Chairman of the Department of Cardiovascular Surgery at Mount Sinai Morningside, Mount Sinai Downtown and Mount Sinai West and also serves as Director of Surgical Coronary Revascularization for the Mount Sinai Health System. He is Professor of Cardiovascular Surgery in the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York.

Dr. Puskas is expert in all aspects of adult cardiac surgery and has a special interest in state-of-the-art coronary bypass surgery. He is internationally recognized for his expertise in off-pump coronary artery bypass surgery and has performed more than 5000 off-pump coronary bypass surgeries since 1996, with exceptional results. In 1997, he performed the world's first triple, quadruple and quintuple off-pump bypass surgeries. In addition to his extensive leadership in less invasive coronary bypass surgery, he is recognized for his work in multiple-arterial and all-arterial revascularization strategies, minimally invasive conduit harvest and minimally invasive robotic coronary revascularization. He in a global leader in the development of minimally invasive Hybrid Coronary Revascularization, which combines robotic bypass grafting with catheter-based stents in selected patients. Dr Puskas has performed approximately 500 minimally invasive robotic coronary bypass procedures.

Dr Puskas has also been a pioneer in the development of minimally invasive surgical techniques for the treatment of atrial fibrillation and performed the world’s first totally thoracoscopic bilateral pulmonary vein isolation procedure.
Prior to joining Mount Sinai in 2014, Dr. Puskas served at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta as Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Emory University Hospital Midtown, founding Director of the Clinical Research Unit and as Professor and Associate Chief of the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery.

At Mount Sinai, Dr. Puskas has continued his pioneering work investigating the benefits of off-pump cardiac surgery, developing new surgical techniques, and testing the latest technologies in advanced clinical trials. He is or has been the national/international principal investigator for four U.S. Food and Drug Administration investigational device trials and national principal investigator for the NIH-sponsored Hybrid Revascularization Trial, exploring novel approaches to the treatment of coronary artery disease by combining both minimally invasive robotic coronary bypass surgery and catheter-based stent therapies. Dr Puskas was a founding member of the NIH Cardiothoracic Surgery Trials Network and serves on the Steering Committee of that prestigious organization.

Dr. Puskas is a founding member (1996) and past president (2009) of the International Society for Minimally Invasive Cardiothoracic Surgery and a member of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, American College of Chest Physicians, American College of Surgeons, and Society of Thoracic Surgeons. He is also a fellow the American College of Cardiology.

Dr Puskas is co-founder (2015) of the International Coronary Congress, the only international annual scientific symposium dedicated to state-of-the-art coronary bypass surgery.  He is also co-editor of the Oxford University Press textbook, State-of-the-Art Surgical Coronary Revascularization, the only major textbook devoted entirely to coronary bypass surgery. Dr Puskas has been invited to give more than 400 lectures throughout the world and has published more than 250 peer-reviewed scientific papers in the field of cardiac surgery.

A summa cum laude graduate of Princeton University, Dr. Puskas won the senior thesis prize from the Department of Biology and went on to receive his medical degree from Harvard Medical School. He completed his residency in general surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital and his cardiothoracic surgery residency and fellowship training at Emory University School of Medicine. He earned a Master’s degree in Surgical Science from the University of Toronto.