Dr. Richard W. Nesto is Chairman, Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at Lahey Clinic Medical Center in Burlington, Massachusetts, and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Boston.  Previously, he was Director of Clinical Research in Cardiology and Co-Director of the Institute for Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.  Dr. Nesto’s major interest involves heart disease in patients with diabetes mellitus.  His contributions have lead to a wider appreciation that coronary artery disease has unique features and that treatment of coronary syndromes in these patients requires a specialized approach. He has conducted numerous studies evaluating the impact of diabetes on cardiac structure and function.  He is a Co-principal Investigator of BARI-2D, an NIH trial evaluating various treatment strategies to improve survival in patients with diabetes and coronary artery disease.  He practices interventional cardiology and his expertise in intracoronary imaging techniques has contributed to the characterization of the anatomic substrate underlying acute coronary syndromes and the risk factors for procedural complications.  He has authored or co-authored nearly 200 original scientific articles, book chapters and abstracts.
 
        Dr. Nesto is a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology, American Heart Association, American College of Angiology and American College of Chest Physicians, and a member of the American Diabetes Association and is Vice President of the International Society of Diabetes and Vascular Disease.  He has authored definitive chapters on diabetes and heart disease in Braunwald’s Heart Disease, William’s Textbook of Endocrinology and Joslin’s Diabetes. He was a participant in the AHA Prevention VI Conference on Diabetes and Cardiovascular Disease.  He is a member of the Diabetes Committee of the AHA and has served on numerous consensus panels on the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular disease in diabetes.  The AHA selected him to be the physician spokesperson for its national campaign “Heart of Diabetes” designed to increase awareness of the importance of diabetes as a risk factor for cardiovascular disease.