2024 Laennec Clinician/Educator Lecture - Allan L. Klein. MD, FAHA

 

Dr. Allan L. Klein is the recipient of the 2024 AHA Laennec Clinician/Educator Lecture award, recognizing his leadership in the field of clinical cardiology and echocardiography, and his exceptional commitment to clinical cardiology, research and education.

A Canadian by birth, Dr. Klein earned his medical degree from McGill University in Montreal. He completed his clinical training at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto and the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal. After completing a cardiology residency at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute in Ontario and a research fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, he was appointed to Cleveland Clinic in 1989, where he continues to practice today. He is currently a professor of Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western University, Director of the Center for the Diagnosis and Treatment of PericardiaI Diseases, and a staff cardiologist in the Section of Cardiovascular Imaging Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, Heart Vascular and Thoracic Institute. He directed cardiovascular imaging research for 20 years at the Cleveland Clinic.

Dr. Klein is best known for his work in pericardial diseases, diastolic function and TEE-guided cardioversion. He is the author or co-author of more than 460 peer-reviewed articles in professional journals, co-author of more than 50 chapters in medical textbooks, and has published over 550 abstracts. He has published seminal clinical trials in the New England Journal of Medicine using TEE-guided cardioversion in atrial fibrillation, which revolutionized the approach to cardioversion. He also has studied the role of interleukin 1 inhibitor in recurrent pericarditis, which resulted in a paradigm shift in treatment of that disease. He recently chaired the consensus statement “Pericardial Diseases: International Position Statement on New Concepts and Advances in Multimodality Cardiac Imaging” published in JACC Cardiovascular Imaging. He is co-editor of two books, “Diastology: Clinical Approach to Diastolic Heart Failure” and “Clinical Echocardiography Review: A Self-Assessment Tool.”

He is actively involved in the American Society of Echocardiography where he served as president from 2016 to 2017. He received the ASE mentorship award in 2023. He is also the president-elect on the board of directors of the National Board of Echocardiography. He has been the director of the Cleveland Clinic’s Valve Disease, Structural Interventions and Imaging Summit courses for the last 26 years. He was a recipient of the European Society of Cardiology Life Achievement Award from the Working Group on Myocardial and Pericardial Diseases.

Dr. Klein is as an avid sportsman, playing ice hockey, cycling, hiking, golfing and playing pickle ball. Speaking French and English has been useful during his worldly travels with his wife and their three children.