Michael Charles Slack, MD

Dr. Slack specializes in complex intravascular stent procedures to open various vessels all the way to the closure of all types of simple and complex cardiac septal defects. He also focuses on the treatment of congenital heart defects in ultra-premature infants and transcatheter heart valve repair and replacement in both children and adults. He offers percutaneous treatment (non-surgical) for all forms of congenital and structural heart defects in adult patients.

Dr. Slack is director of the Congenital Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory (pediatric and adult) at University of Maryland Medical Center. He previously spent 15 years building and running a large program at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C. He also established the Adult Congenital Interventional Cardiac Catheterization Program at MedStar Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C., where he continues to perform complex cardiac catheterization procedures.

Dr. Slack completed his pediatric residency at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, after which he did a tour of duty as a pediatrician in Germany. He would continue his medical training, completing fellowships in pediatric cardiology and congenital interventional cardiology at Texas Children’s Hospital and the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. He then served as a congenital interventional cardiologist at Walter Reed Army Medical Center for five years. At the end of his Army service, he entered private practice in Phoenix, Arizona, serving as director of the Congenital Interventional Cardiac Catheterization Program at Phoenix Children’s Hospital and St. Joseph’s Medical Center, where he performed most of the congenital cardiac catheterizations in the state of Arizona. He re-entered academic practice when he and his family moved back to the D.C. metropolitan area in 1999.

An avid researcher, Dr. Slack has been and continues to be a principal site investigator on many new cardiac device clinical trials. He continues to study the use of real-time MRI imaging as an alternative image guidance system to conventional X-rays His clinical interests are numerous and span the entire spectrum of congenital and structural cardiovascular medicine in infants, children and adults.