Know Your Doctor

Over a career spanning more than 19 years, Dr Sharath has established himself at the forefront of interventional cardiology in India. His operating domain is the hardest end of cardiac medicine: Chronic Total Occlusions (CTOs) — coronary arteries 100% blocked for three months or more — and high-risk complex interventions that many centres decline to attempt.

He is one of the leading TAVR (Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement) operators in South India, offering patients with severe aortic valve disease a minimally invasive route to recovery that would previously have required open-heart surgery. He also performs Impella- and ECMO-assisted high-risk PCI, MitraClip, and a full range of structural heart interventions, placing him among a small cohort of Indian cardiologists capable of the complete spectrum of advanced cardiac care.

His fellowships from four of the world's most respected cardiac bodies — the American College of Cardiology (FACC), the American Heart Association (FAHA), the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions (FSCAI), and the European Society of Cardiology (FESC) — reflect not only academic achievement but active peer recognition at the international level.

Dr Sharath's influence extends well beyond his own catheterization laboratory. He is a national Proctor for complex coronary interventions, IVUS-guided procedures, rotablation, and all CTO approaches — antegrade, retrograde, and antegrade dissection and re-entry. He has proctored cases at Hinduja Hospital Mumbai, Apollo Hospital Guwahati, KIMS Trivandrum, Command Hospital Air Force Bangalore, Army Hospital Research & Referral New Delhi, and centres in Raipur, Jaipur, Vijayawada, and Visakhapatnam.

He is Course Co-director of IJCTO — the Indo-Japanese Chronic Total Occlusion conference, one of the premier CTO education platforms in the Asia-Pacific region. He is Faculty at CHIP CTO, India Live, TCTAP (Korea), and a Member of CCT. He is the Director and Organising Secretary of CTO Live India, the country's leading live-case CTO programme. Across his career, he has contributed to over 500 national and international workshops and has personally led more than 100 workshops.

In 2026, he convened Fellows India — Wire to Wisdom, a national programme for interventional cardiology fellows held at Hyderabad, bridging the gap between published knowledge and real-world procedural excellence.

Book: Decoding CTO: Case-based Discussions — authored by Dr Sharath, this is among the few dedicated Indian texts on CTO intervention, used by both training cardiologists and experienced operators internationally. His chapter CrossBoss and Stingray: Step by Step is also published in the Cardiology Society of India's Cardiology Update 2022.

Dr Sharath is a certified Heartfulness Meditation Trainer — and he brings this practice directly into the medical community he serves. He trains doctors and cardiologists in Heartfulness meditation as a deliberate investment in professional capability, convinced that the quality of inner attention a physician brings to the operating table is as consequential as the instruments in their hands.

Interventional cardiology — particularly CTO procedures, which can run for 120 to 180 minutes through extraordinarily complex coronary anatomy — demands a form of sustained, fine-grained focus that does not degrade under pressure. Dr Sharath argues that Heartfulness meditation, practised consistently, develops precisely this quality: a relaxed yet razor-sharp awareness, undisturbed by fatigue, anxiety, or the weight of prior outcomes.

Through workshops and one-on-one mentorship, he regularly conducts training sessions for medical students, young practitioners, and senior cardiologists alike — in collaboration with the Heartfulness Institute, AIIMS, and the Ministry of AYUSH. He is also a key organising member of IHW — the International Conference on Health and Wellbeing — which brings together experts from modern medicine, Ayurveda, Yoga, and Heartfulness meditation on a single platform.

"The steadiness needed to navigate a fully occluded artery is the same steadiness that Heartfulness practice cultivates. I did not choose between the two. I found they were the same thing." — Dr Sharath