Dr. G C. Chad

I specialize in thoracic aortic disease and valvular heart disease. My career focus has been taking care of complex and high-risk cardiac surgery patients. I gain tremendous satisfaction from my interactions with my patients and value the long-term relationships I have with many of them. In addition, I enjoy teaching the next generation of surgeons and improving the field through research. In my spare time, I enjoy spending time with family and traveling. Dr. Chen is rated as a Distinguished provider by MediFind in Heart Valve Repair. His top areas of expertise are Thoracic Aortic Aneurysm, Aortic Dissection, Aortic Regurgitation, Heart Valve Repair, and Aortic Valve Replacement.

I'm proud to work at Duke as it has a tremendous hospital and tremendous people to work with. The quality of care here is excellent and really can’t be compared to anywhere else. That’s what keeps me here. We do more complex heart surgeries here than almost anyone else in the country. When you need heart surgery, you want it done by someone who does a lot of it. Our numbers are comparable to the top places in the country. We do complex surgery and we do it well. The thing about heart surgery is that we make people better. That’s what I really like – helping people who couldn’t breathe or couldn’t walk because their heart was failing, and we were able to make them better. Dr. Gaca is rated as a Distinguished provider by MediFind in Heart Valve Repair. His top areas of expertise are Mitral Stenosis, Aortic Valve Stenosis, Mitral Valve Regurgitation, Aortic Valve Replacement, and Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement (TAVR).

My particular area of interest is what we call structural heart disease in adults. That usually involves valve problems, things like muscle bound hearts, tumors of the heart or sometimes arrhythmias. Another area of interest for me is minimally invasive surgery, which involves entering the heart area through the ribs on the side rather than through the breast bone, either manually with a camera or robotically. Surgeons are very hands-on people. We like doing things. But most of all we like helping people, talking with patients and their families, and helping them make up their minds about whether to have a procedure done, what kind of procedure to have, and helping them get through the procedure afterwards. That’s what we really enjoy doing. That’s really satisfying. Dr. Glower is rated as a Distinguished provider by MediFind in Heart Valve Repair. His top areas of expertise are Mitral Valve Regurgitation, Mitral Stenosis, Atrial Myxoma, Heart Valve Repair, and Aortic Valve Replacement.