Faculty and Academic Staff
Professor David Maron, MD
DAVID MARON, MD, is Professor of Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine. He received his undergraduate degree from Stanford University and his medical degree from the University of Southern California. He trained in internal medicine at UCLA. He returned to Stanford where he was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar, a preventive cardiology fellow at the Stanford Prevention Research Center, and remained at Stanford to complete a cardiology fellowship. After a brief stint in private practice in Santa Monica, he joined the faculty at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in 1993 as Director of Preventive Cardiology, and rose through the ranks to Professor. In 2014 he returned to Stanford where he serves as Chief of SPRC and Director of Preventive Cardiology.
Dr. Maron sees patients in the Preventive Cardiology Clinic. His research interests include primary and secondary prevention of coronary artery disease. As a fellow at SPRC, he was introduced to clinical research as a member of the team that conducted the Stanford Coronary Risk Intervention Project. He applied lessons learned from that experience to the design of the landmark COURAGE trial, for which he served as the chairman of the optimal medical therapy committee. He went on to be principal investigator and co-chair of the ISCHEMIA trial, an NIH-funded study comparing the effectiveness of two initial management strategies – invasive (optimal medical therapy plus cardiac catheterization and revascularization with stents or bypass surgery) versus conservative (optimal medical therapy alone) – in approximately 5,000 patients with stable coronary artery disease and at least moderate ischemia on a stress test. There was no overall statistical difference in major clinical endpoints in ISCHEMIA, but patients with angina had better symptom relief with invasive management. COURAGE and ISCHEMIA have had a major impact on the management of stable coronary disease around the world, with both trials emphasizing the importance of lifestyle and appropriate medications to control risk factors and prevent heart attacks and death.