Nils Johnson, MD, MS

Professor of Medicine
Weatherhead Distinguished Chair of Heart Disease
Associate Director, Weatherhead P.E.T. Imaging Center
McGovern Medical School at UTHealth (Houston)

Email: [email protected]
Phone: 713-500-6611

Educational Philosophy

My recipe for effective teaching contains these 3 key ingredients. First: Socratic. Direct dialogue with learners provides an opportunity to hear what the other person understands and provide immediate and personalized teaching and feedback. Helping someone think through a concept in real time demands a wide toolkit for responses, from rephrasing to analogy to anticipation. As a labor intensive method that depends on robust language skills and a cultural milieu for being wrong in front of others, the Socratic method needs selective application. Second: experiential. Ultimately health care is about helping a person and thus its teaching must be grounded in application. I thought I deeply understood many concepts until it was 3am in the emergency department and a sick patient was depending on my decision. Consequently, a hospital or clinic is just as much a classroom as a lecture hall. Specifically in my field of cardiology, many treatments are procedures that we perform personally, such as inserting a stent to open a blocked artery that is causing a heart attack. Third: visual. I have been very influenced by the work of Edward Tufte and his books like the “Visual Display of Quantitative Information”. To paraphrase him, “if your figures are boring, then you are showing the wrong figures.” Especially given my invitations to speak in many countries to groups with differing levels of English, I strive to make each slide a self-contained lesson that could largely be understood without my saying anything.

Biography

Dr. Nils Johnson grew up equally in Edmonton, Houston, and Tulsa (his father was in the oil industry), becoming an Eagle Scout and violin member of the all-state orchestra in high school before spending an exchange year in Witzenhausen, Germany. He completed his undergraduate degree in physics and computing at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver; medical school at Columbia University in Manhattan; and internal medicine residency, cardiology fellowship, and interventional cardiology fellowship at Northwestern University in Chicago, where he also earned a Master of Science degree in epidemiology and biostatistics.

His research with long-term mentor Dr. K. Lance Gould started in 1999 and focuses on clinical physiology, from non-invasive perfusion imaging to intracoronary hemodynamics. During 2015-16 he spent an academic sabbatical year emphasizing invasive coronary physiology with Dr. Nico Pijls at the Catharina Hospital in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Dr. Johnson served as the principal investigator for international trials in coronary hemodynamics like CONTRAST (NCT02184117) and DEFINE-FLOW (NCT02328820). He has lectured in 19 countries across 4 continents and contributed to about 200 publications. Dr. Johnson is a full Professor of Medicine and holds the Weatherhead Distinguished Chair of Heart Disease.

Education

-Undergraduate Degree
Physics and computing, University of British Columbia, Vancouver

-Medical Degree
Columbia University, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Manhattan

-Residency and Fellowships
Internal medicine, cardiology, and interventional cardiology, Northwestern University, Chicago

-Masters Degree
Epidemiology and biostatistics, Northwestern University, Chicago

Current Teaching Responsibilities

-Course director for MS1 cardiovascular module along with Dr. Shane Cunha
-Regular lectures for MS1, internal medicine resident, cardiology fellows
-Resident and fellow supervision on inpatient cardiology services
-Cardiology and interventional cardiology fellow supervision in the cardiac catheterization laboratory
-Weekly cardiology “cath conference” meeting

Areas of Interest

-P.E.T. imaging of myocardial blood flow
-intracoronary measurements of pressure and flow (FFR and CFR)
-aortic stenosis hemodynamic physiology

Honors and Awards

-Dean’s Teaching Excellence Award at UTHealth (2012, 2017/18, 2018/19, 2019/20, 2020/21)
-John P. and Katherine G. McGovern Master Teacher Award (2021/22, 2022/23)
-Cardiology Faculty of the Year Award at UTHealth (2017/18)
-Interventional Cardiology Teaching Award at UTHealth (2016/17, 2021/22, 2023/24)

Selected Publications

  1. Johnson NP, Matsuo H, Nakayama M, Eftekhari A, Kakuta T, Tanaka N, Christiansen EH, Kirkeeide RL, Gould KL. Combined pressure and flow measurements to guide treatment of coronary stenoses. JACC Cardiovascular Interventions. 2021 Sep 13;14(17):1904-1913.
  2. Johnson NP, Gould KL, De Bruyne B. Autoregulation of coronary blood supply in response to demand: JACC Review Topic of the Week. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2021 May 11;77(18):2335-2345.
  3. Johnson NP, Zelis JM, Tonino PAL, Houthuizen P, Bouwman RA, Brueren GRG, Johnson DT, Koolen JJ, Korsten HHM, Wijnbergen IF, Zimmermann FM, Kirkeeide RL, Pijls NHJ, Gould KL. Pressure gradient vs. flow relationships to characterize the physiology of a severely stenotic aortic valve before and after transcatheter valve implantation. European Heart Journal. 2018 Jul 21;39(28):2646-2655.
  4. Johnson NP, Jeremias A, Zimmermann FM, Adjedj J, Witt N, Hennigan B, Koo BK, Maehara A, Matsumura M, Barbato E, Esposito G, Trimarco B, Rioufol G, Park SJ, Yang HM, Baptista SB, Chrysant GS, Leone AM, Berry C, De Bruyne B, Gould KL, Kirkeeide RL, Oldroyd KG, Pijls NHJ, Fearon WF. Continuum of vasodilator stress from rest to contrast medium to adenosine hyperemia for fractional flow reserve assessment. JACC Cardiovascular Interventions. 2016 Apr 25;9(8):757-767.
  5. Johnson NP, Tóth GG, Lai D, Zhu H, Açar G, Agostoni P, Appelman Y, Arslan F, Barbato E, Chen SL, Di Serafino L, Domínguez-Franco AJ, Dupouy P, Esen AM, Esen OB, Hamilos M, Iwasaki K, Jensen LO, Jiménez-Navarro MF, Katritsis DG, Kocaman SA, Koo BK, López-Palop R, Lorin JD, Miller LH, Muller O, Nam CW, Oud N, Puymirat E, Rieber J, Rioufol G, Rodés-Cabau J, Sedlis SP, Takeishi Y, Tonino PA, Van Belle E, Verna E, Werner GS, Fearon WF, Pijls NH, De Bruyne B, Gould KL. Prognostic value of fractional flow reserve: linking physiologic severity to clinical outcomes. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2014 Oct 21;64(16):1641-54.
  6. Johnson NP, Gould KL. Integrating noninvasive absolute flow, coronary flow reserve, and ischemic thresholds into a comprehensive map of physiological severity. JACC Cardiovascular Imaging. 2012 Apr;5(4):430-40.
  7. Johnson NP, Kirkeeide RL, Gould KL. Is discordance of coronary flow reserve and fractional flow reserve due to methodology or clinically relevant coronary pathophysiology? JACC Cardiovascular Imaging. 2012 Feb;5(2):193-202.