Tomislav Mihaljevic, MD is the Chief of Staff and Chairman of the Heart and Vascular Institute, Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi; an Attending Surgeon in the Cleveland Clinic Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery; and a Professor of Surgery at Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine at Case Western University. He is certified by the American Board of Thoracic Surgery and the American Board of Surgery. Dr. Mihaljevic specializes in minimally invasive cardiac surgery, robotically assisted cardiac surgery - particularly robotic mitral valve repair, complex valve operations and reoperations, heart failure surgery and cardiac transplantation.
A native of Croatia, Dr. Mihaljevic received his medical degree from the Medical School, University of Zagreb, Croatia. He completed his residency in cardiovascular surgery at the Clinic for Cardiovascular Surgery of the University of Zurich, Switzerland. This was followed by residencies in general and cardiothoracic surgery at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School. He later became Chief Resident in the Department of Cardiovascular Surgery at Children’s Hospital in Boston.
Prior to his 2004 appointment to the Cleveland Clinic, Dr. Mihaljevic was Director of the Cardiac Surgery Research Laboratory and an Associate Surgeon in the Division of Cardiac Surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Dr. Mihaljevic held a seven-year academic appointment to Harvard Medical School as a Clinical Fellow in Surgery. He was also Assistant Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Mihaljevic has been on the editorial review board for prestigious medical journals. He is the author or co-author of numerous articles in medical and peer-reviewed scientific journals, and is the author of a numerous textbook chapters on robotic and minimally invasive mitral valve surgery, and valvular heart disease. In 2005, Dr. Mihaljevic received a patent for a novel system for minimally invasive cardiac surgery.
Dr. Mihaljevic’s research has focused on minimally invasive cardiac surgery, robotically assisted cardiac surgery, intracardiac imaging systems and analysis of beating heart intracardiac surgery, among other research studies. He has been invited to present his research at medical symposia and conferences worldwide.
Dr. Mihaljevic is a member of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, American College of Cardiology, the American College of Chest Physicians, the American Heart Association, the Society of Thoracic Surgeons, the International Society of Heart and Lung Transplantation and the American Medical Association.
An avid reader, Dr. Mihaljevic enjoys contemporary American and European literature.