Top Gun Showcase Event

Sunil Malhotra, MD

Cardiac Surgeon & Director of Congenital Cardiac Surgery

Maine Medical Center

“I am constantly motivated to find ways in my career at MaineHealth to innovate to improve the care for patients with congenital heart disease. MaineHealth Innovation is an invaluable partner and resource to help me achieve my goals."

Sunil Malhotra, MD is a pediatric and adult congenital cardiac surgeon and serves as the Director of Congenital Cardiac Surgery at Maine Medical Center. He is certified by the American Board of Thoracic Surgery in Thoracic and Cardiac Surgery as well as Congenital Cardiac Surgery.

Optimizing outcomes in pediatric cardiac surgery has been a consistent focus of the translational research endeavors throughout Sunil’s career. During his research fellowship in the Division of Pediatric Cardiac Surgery at UCSF, he was fortunate to receive a National Research Service Award from the NIH to study fetal cardiac bypass in a primate model. He developed a novel isolated working fetal heart model to optimize fetal myocardial protection strategies for fetal cardiac surgery.

Sunil’s clinical interests are focused on innovative surgical approaches to complex congenital heart defects, with the goal of minimizing surgical trauma and maximizing quality of life for children and adults born with congenital heart disease. Sunil received a MaineHealth Innovation Ignite Fund in Fall 2021 to pursue the development of a novel pulsatile ventricular graft for patients with congenital heart disease. Hear more about Sunil's project at the June 8^th The Spark event - RSVP today!

Sunil has been a MaineHealth Innovation Clinical Coach since 2021.

READ MORE about Sunil. 

Pocket Nodules Receives its First Order!

Congratulations to Theresa Roelke, APRN-AGPCNP who is anticipating the first volume order from the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC), Lung Ambition Alliance/Astrazeneca for her Pocket Nodules-Lung innovation! Theresa’s abstract for the patient education tool was accepted for presentation at the IASLC World Conference on Lung Cancer in Vienna in early August. Pocket Nodules – Lung tool will be distributed at the conference to physicians, surgeons, APPs, RNs and clinicians for use within the context of lung screening and within a clinical or hospital setting to support patient understanding of lung nodules. 

After receiving a MaineHealth Innovation Ignite Fund last fall, she partnered with G&G Manufacturing in Kennebunk, ME and Lamontagne Engineering to refine her latest design and start production. Theresa is in the process of negotiating a licensing agreement with MaineHealth and is in early conversation with leadership from the VA in Maine for potential use of the tool regionally.  She is also in conversation with leadership from MaineHealth for distribution of the tool across MaineHealth.