Dr. Ankit B. Shah, MD, MPH

Ankit Shah, MD, is a fellowship trained sports cardiologist at MedStar Heart & Vascular Institute. He is the Director of MedStar Sports & Performance Cardiology and Assistant Professor of Medicine, Georgetown University Medical Center.

A graduate of the only sports cardiology fellowship in the country, Dr. Shah is uniquely positioned to offer comprehensive cardiovascular care and physiologic testing for active individuals and athletes. He is board certified in Cardiovascular Disease, Internal Medicine, Echocardiography, Nuclear Cardiology and Cardiac CT. He conducts his evaluations in the context of the cardiovascular demands of exercise, training-related cardiac adaptations and the individual’s goal to regain or preserve his/her activity level and exercise performance. He tailors his evaluations for healthy individuals and for those with established cardiovascular disease or cardiovascular symptoms.

Dr. Shah is studying the safety of exercise in patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Additionally, he is interested in the cardiac screening of athletes and long-term effects of endurance exercise on the heart. In addition to his role at MedStar, Dr. Shah is the National Team Cardiologist for USA Swimming.

In this emerging field of cardiovascular medicine, Dr. Shah is a proponent of shared decision-making and empowers his patients and their families to take an active role in formulating the care plan. When decisions are made together, patients are much more likely to follow the treatment plan and understand the risk/benefit of the decisions.

He has written a book chapter “Cardiovascular Care for the Endurance Runner” in the recently published book The Long Distance Runner’s Guide to Injury Prevention and Treatment and he has written a book chapter “Managing Cardiovascular Disease in Sport and Athletes” in the Encyclopedia of Cardiovascular Research in Medicine (2018).

Dr. Shah has been on the faculty at the annual sports cardiology conference, “Care of the Athletic Heart” sponsored by the American College of Cardiology in 2018 and 2019.