Dr. David McPherson, MD

Dr. David McPherson earned his medical degree from the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry at University of Alberta in Canada. He went on to complete his internal medicine residency with the Faculty of Medicine at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. Dr. McPherson finished his cardiovascular disease fellowship with the University of Iowa (UI) Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine at the UI Hospitals and Clinics. Prior to coming to Texas, he worked at Northwestern University in Chicago was the director of research in Cardiology and was responsible for a large advanced echocardiography training course for the Midwest.

Board certified in cardiovascular disease, Dr. David Dugald McPherson specializes in treating patients with cardiovascular diseases and noninvasive cardiology conditions. His clinical interests include evaluation of valvular heart disease, adult congenital heart disease cardiology, clinical echocardiography and transesophageal echocardiography (TEE).

Dr. McPherson is the chair of the Department of Internal Medicine, the division director and a professor of the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth and the medical director of the Memorial Hermann Heart & Vascular Institute-Texas Medical Center. In addition, he supervises biomedical engineering doctoral students, cardiology fellows, residents and medical students training in advanced echocardiographic research.

Throughout his career, Dr. McPherson has been the recipient of many distinctions, awards and grants for the development and use of new and innovative ultrasound tools and devices for the evaluation and treatment of atherosclerosis in coronary and peripheral vascular beds. Current research projects include the development of new acoustic agents for ultrasound tissue enhancement and targeted drug and gene delivery to arteries and the brain; development of new ultrasound techniques to guide angioplasty and stent placement; and new three dimensional techniques for cardiac and vascular reconstruction. He has also received awards from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the American Heart Association (AHA). Dr. McPherson is the past president of the AHA, Houston Affiliate. Additionally, he is the principal investigator of the Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences at UTHealth, a large, federally funded entity of which only a few exist in the country to develop clinical and translational research in conjunction with UTHealth’s School of Public Health and The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Dr. McPherson has authored 180 manuscripts, 357 abstracts, 26 book chapters, 14 review articles, and seven editorials in the fields of evaluating atheroma, drug and gene delivery, and cardiovascular dynamics. He is also the co-editor of the textbook Non-invasive Imaging of Atherosclerosis. Furthermore, Dr. McPherson is a reviewer for many journals including Circulation, Circulation Research and the American Journal of Physiology. He serves on the editorial board of the American Journal of Physiology, and is a standing NIH grant reviewer.