photograph courtesy stern cardiovascular
Top Doctor Spotlight
Editor's Note: Every year, the national medical group Castle Connolly produces a list of the best doctors in America. In the Memphis area, the 2022 Top Doctors list comprises more than 300 physicians representing 60 different specialties. Here, we introduce you to one of the care-givers who have been named a Top Doc time and again.
An experienced cardiologist and cardiac imaging specialist, Dr. Neeraja Yedlapati has honed her skills for almost two decades, receiving certifications for related subspecialties and even doing cardiac imaging for NBA athletes.
Yedlapati joined Stern Cardiovascular in March of this year and quickly got to work seeing patients. “What drew me to Stern is that there are so many subspecialties at the practice,” she says. “We have physicians who complement each other. While my own specialty is cardiac imaging, there are many other areas that I work in. So I thought a practice like Stern would allow me to do more, and to help more patients.”
Founded in 1920, Stern is this region's oldest and largest cardiac center, with more than 40 cardiologists and other heart specialists practicing at ten locations in Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi.
“The rate of heart disease is higher here than the U.S. average, so I thought I could do a lot more for Memphis than other cities.” — Dr. Neeraja Yedlapati
Yedlapati didn’t initially plan to become a doctor. While she was in high school in India, however, some of her family members experienced medical issues. They sat down and discussed how important family was, and her mind was made up. She’d go into medicine, and she knew cardiology would be the best field for her.
After graduating from Deccan College of Medical Sciences in India, Yedlapati traveled to the United States to further her medical education. She completed her residency in internal medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City; she stayed in New York for her fellowship in cardiology and advanced cardiac imaging at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
She came to Memphis because she decided this was the best place to make use of her cardiology background. “The rate of heart disease is higher here than the U.S. average, so I thought I could do a lot more for Memphis than other cities,” says Yedlapati. “The amount of different cardiomyopathies I see here is vast. There are so many undiagnosed conditions, so I knew I could make a big difference if I worked here.”
Yedlapati focuses on reading cardiac CTs and MRIs, reviewing echocardiograms, and conducting nuclear imaging cardiac stress tests. And her keen eye is set on discovering conditions that might not appear during regular imaging and testing.
“When it comes to MRIs, there are certain types of familial or genetic cardiomyopathies that are not usually picked up,” she says. “For those, I might do cardiac magnetic resonance imaging to uncover these hidden cardiomyopathies and begin treatment.”
Once she is settled fully at Stern, Yedlapati hopes to use her platform to open a new clinic focusing on women’s heart issues. “From what I’ve seen, many women don’t show up at doctors or hospitals unless their heart condition becomes very bad,” she says. “The symptoms are so different from other cardiac patients, that I think a specialized center would be a boon to Memphis.”
It’s something she envisions happening in the next few years. “It would be under the Stern umbrella, and they’ve been very supportive of my goal,” she says. “They were really excited to learn about it, so while it’s still in the early stages, they’ve said they’ll do everything in their power to help me realize this.”
