overview

• Dr. Nifong is Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the East Carolina Heart Institute in Greenville, North Carolina. He is the Directory of Robotic Surgery and Director of Structural Heart. He is also Interim Chief of Cardiac Surgery. He attended college at North Carolina State University and graduated from East Carolina University School of Medicine. He completed his general surgery residency at the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York. He also completed two years as a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Rochester. He completed cardiothoracic surgery training at Wake Forest University/Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He is a member of Alpha Omega Alpha. Dr. Nifong’s major area of interest is in minimally invasive cardiothoracic surgery and the fields of computer-assisted and robotic surgery. He has worked extensively with the FDA in developing protocols for the first robotic mitral valve phase I trial in North America and with the multi-center phase II trial for mitral valve repairs which led to FDA approval for intracardiac use. Along with robotic surgery, he is involved with various types of new technology to aid minimally invasive procedures including atrial fibrillation ablation energy sources, anastomotic devices, adherence devices, sutureless technology, and intracardiac retraction. He is also working with robotic simulation.Dr. Nifong directs the Minimally Invasive and Robotic Training Center at East Carolina University. He has been involved with the training of over 1000 surgical teams in the use of minimally invasive and robotic surgery. He has several unrestricted grants and has an “Innovation in Clinical Science Award” from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. He has NIH funding with a Bioengineering R01 grant in collaboration with the School of Engineering at North Carolina State University.