Bradley Kay, MD, is a cardiovascular imaging specialist with a specific interest in point-of-care (by the bedside) echocardiographic imaging in the cardiac intensive care unit. He has expertise in using an echocardiogram, a scan that uses sound waves to create pictures of the heart and show blood flow.
“I've always had a passion for helping others,” say Dr. Kay, who volunteered in high school and college for a Muscular Dystrophy Association summer camp, Unicamp, at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), which links student volunteers with urban L.A. youth. “Combining my love for helping others with my passion for science led me to medicine. My background in biochemistry [which he studied at UCLA] with an extra interest in physics made cardiology a natural fit.”
Dr. Kay says the patient population in Southern Connecticut is extremely diverse, which was also something he loved about Southern California. “Namely, I feel that I am always in the fortunate position of learning something new from my patients,” he says, adding that can mean everything from how patients feel about care to where to get the best Columbian roast coffee beans. “These daily rewarding and engaging interactions make it easy to get up for work in the morning,” he says.
An assistant professor of medicine (cardiovascular) at Yale School of Medicine, Dr. Kay is currently investigating echo parameters of extubation in the cardiac intensive care unit for patients with heart failure. This essentially involves using measurements of the heart obtained via ultrasound to predict which patients will do well after the breathing tube is removed, he says.
