TUPELO—Talking to Vishal Sachdev on the phone, one might be surprised to learn he's not a native southern boy. His tone and inflections indicate a hint of Deep South drawl. His easy laugh and amiable manner suggest he was schooled in the art of hospitality. His English is arguably perfect. Yet not too long ago, he arrived in America without much knowledge of the language and was, in many ways, completely lost.

 

"That was probably the toughest time for me," said Sachdev, who moved from India to the United States in 1982 at the age of 15. Now, he's a highly-respected cardiothoracic surgeon for North Mississippi Medical Center (NMMC) in Tupelo, where he's introducing state-of-the-art specialty procedures to the nation's largest rural hospital system.

 

"I guess I have come a long way," said Sachdev, with a chuckle. "When we settled in Baton Rouge, my mother (Arti) didn't speak any English and my little brother was too young to work. I spoke very little English. Somehow, we had to find a way to support ourselves."

 

Even though finding a job was difficult, the local McDonald's hired him to clean tables. Within two years, Sachdev had moved to assistant manager as one of the youngest franchise employees in the metropolitan area to supervise employees. "The culture change was difficult, too," Sachdev said. "My father (Surjan) was an internist and we were very well to do in India, but my parents wanted us to have opportunities to better ourselves. That's the beautiful thing about America, and was behind the push to come over here."

 

Sachdev finished high school in 1985, and earned a college degree in 1989 from Louisiana State University (LSU), where he was given a four-year NIH grant to do biochemistry research on DNA polymorphism. His work in a chemistry lab helped pay the rent through undergraduate school. He met his wife, internist Pami Taylor, in pre-med classes and married a week after graduating from medical school.

 

After earning a medical degree from the LSU School of Medicine in New Orleans in 1993, Sachdev headed to the University of Mississippi Medical Center to complete his general surgery internship.

 

"During my residency in Jackson, my father had a heart attack and died," Sachdev said. "That leaned my interest toward cardiac surgery. Also, I had some very good mentors."

 

Board certified by the American Board of Surgery, Sachdev joined the NMMC medical staff in 2000.

 

"Right off the bat, I got interested in heart failure and went to Italy to train on heart failure procedures," he explained. "When I got back, we established a program for heart failure surgery. We were the first in the state to do left ventricle remodeling, and we've had good success with those procedures. A couple of years later, in collaboration with pulmonologists and oncologists, we opened an advanced lung center and started doing minimally invasive lung surgery and radiofrequency ablations for lung cancer."  

 

When cardiac surgery evolved into more endovascular and percutaneous procedures, Sachdev took six months to train at Baptist East in Memphis with Ed Garrett, MD, on left ventricle assist devices—artificial pumps attached to the heart to help support heart patients who are not candidates for transplants, endovascular and percutaneous procedures on aorta and carotid arteries.

 

"It was a continuation of the heart failure program we'd started nine years ago," he said.

 

Sachdev's long-term interest involves endovascular research and left ventricle assist devices for heart failure patients.

 

"No one is really doing that, and it's a shame because Mississippi leads the nation in heart disease," he said. "It's my passion to see something happen in the state to help heart patients."

 

Because spare time is so precious, Sachdev usually heads to his cabin on Smith Lake in Alabama, located about 100 miles from Tupelo, with his family, including two children, Caleb, 13, and Maya, 10. His mother lives with the family, helping care for the children.

 

"We play on the water the whole time we're there," he said.

 

He admittedly has let one activity slide—running. "It's been about a year since I've done that," he said. "I haven't dedicated time for it, and at some point, I'd like to get back into a running routine."