John F Hennecken, MD

Dr. John Hennecken was born in Manhattan and earned his undergraduate degree from Saint John’s University.  Upon graduation, he was commissioned an officer in the United States Army.  He received his medical degree with honors from S.U.N.Y. Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn and was inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha honor medical society.  He completed his internship and residency at The Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, where he was also a Chief Resident. He completed his cardiology and interventional cardiology fellowships at Yale University.  After fellowship he served on active duty at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas.  Upon leaving active duty, he was appointed Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio.  There, he participated in some of the early research using the Palmaz-Shatz coronary stent and was an investigator in the Stent Restenosis Study.  This multicenter randomized trial, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, demonstrated that coronary stenting was superior to balloon angioplasty alone and led to the Palmaz-Shatz stent becoming the first stent approved in the United States for general treatment of coronary artery disease.  After FDA approval of this device, Dr. Hennecken was one of a small number of physicians authorized to train cardiologists in its use.  He subsequently accepted an appointment as an Associate Professor of Medicine and Director of the Cardiac Catheterization labs and Interventional Cardiology at the Medical College of Georgia.  He has been in private practice since 1995 and has served as Director of the Cardiac Catheterization labs and Chairman of the Department of Cardiology at University Hospital in Augusta, Georgia.  Since 2008, he has focused on general and preventive cardiology as well as cardiac imaging. 

Dr. Hennecken is board certified in Internal Medicine and Cardiovascular Diseases. He was board certified in Interventional Cardiology from 1999-2009.  He has additional current board certifications in Nuclear Cardiology, Echocardiography, Vascular Ultrasound, and Cardiac Computed Tomography.  He is also a Diplomate of the American Board of Clinical Lipidology.
He has been married to Carol since 1981 and has four children, John, Christina, Kevin and Carolyn.  He enjoys skiing, tennis, and sailing.  He is happy to be back in New York where two of their children as well as other family and friends are living.