Our Physicians
Babak Azarbal, MD
Babak Azarbal, MD, is a cardiologist at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute and the Program Director for Fellowship Training in Interventional Cardiology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. He also is an Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Dr. Azarbal is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology and the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Intervention.
Dr. Azarbal is board certified in cardiovascular disease, interventional cardiology, advanced heart failure/cardiac transplantation, and internal medicine. He has a longstanding interest in all aspects of cardiovascular disease with special expertise in interventional cardiology, management of patients with advanced heart failure, cardiac transplantation, exercise stress testing, and nuclear cardiology. Areas of academic/research interest include performance of complex percutaneous coronary intervention in patients with advanced heart disease and cardiogenic shock, coronary revascularization in patients with cardiac allograft vasculopathy, coronary revascularization in patients with end-stage kidney disease, coronary reactivity testing and microvascular dysfunction, stress testing and exercise predictors of cardiovascular outcomes, intravascular coronary imaging, and cardiac transplantation.
Dr. Azarbal earned his undergraduate degree at Cornell University, where he was a Howard Hughes Scholar. His medical education at Tulane University was followed by internal medicine residency training at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he served an additional year as Chief Resident. Dr. Azarbal’s cardiology fellowship and subspecialty training in interventional cardiology were completed at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Medical Center.
Dr. Azarbal has published over 180 articles and abstracts related to cardiac disease in peer-reviewed publications and a book chapter on problem-oriented approaches in interventional cardiology. His research has been cited in clinical statements from the American Heart Association and in the press. Dr. Azarbal has earned multiple awards for his research, teaching, and clinical care, including being a recipient of the UCLA house-staff Teaching Award, the Excellence in Teaching Award at the Division of Cardiology at
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and the UCLA Division of Cardiology Excellence in Clinical Care Award.