David H. Adams is an American cardiac surgeon and the Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Professor and Chairman of the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City.
[9] Adams is a highly sought speaker both nationally and internationally, and has developed one of the world's largest video libraries of techniques in valve reconstruction.
In addition, he completed a two-year research fellowship under Professor Morris Karnovsky in the Department of Pathology at Harvard Medical School.
A conventional surgical procedure – arresting the heart during the operation, using a heart-and-lung machine, and following up with a regime of anti-clotting drugs – would have terminated the actress's pregnancy.
In the meantime, he replaced two valves, both too badly damaged to attempt reconstruction with time limited by lack of a heart-and-lung machine, with compatible organic tissue – thereby eliminating the need for pregnancy-prohibiting anti-clotting drugs post-surgery.