Nicola D'Attellis, M.D., is a Canadian and Belgian citizen who is fluent in English, French and Italian, married to a French woman, and did his residency at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx. A specialist in cardiothoracic, vascular and transplant anesthesia, D'Attellis came to Cedars-Sinai in 2004 from the Georges Pompidou hospital in Paris.

In February, he was named director of the Cardiac Surgery Intensive Care Unit (CSICU), a 12-bed unit located on the 6th floor of the Saperstein Critical Care Tower. In addition, D'Attellis is Professor of Anesthesiology as well as associate residency program director, director of cardiac anesthesia fellowship and the director of education and research for the Department of Anesthesiology.

What are your immediate goals for the CSICU?

Our department has a long history of providing quality care, dedicated to improving surgical outcomes and an excellent platform for resident education and research. My goal is to transfer these qualities to the CSICU. In addition, I'd like to establish a fellowship program in the CSICU -- it's difficult to get newly accredited, however. Usually, they take programs away, not add them. For example, the Department of Anesthesiology at Cedars-Sinai has recently been accredited with a residency program, making it to my knowledge the only private practice academic program for anesthesiology in the U.S.

I would also like to expand the cardiac anesthesiology fellowship program that began last year. Right now, we have one fellow in cardiac anesthesiology, and we will add a research fellow in 2008. Another goal of ours is to develop other fellowship subspecialty programs in anesthesiology.

How would residents benefit from a CSICU program?

For the cardiac rotation, we get residents from as far away as UC Irvine and UC Riverside/UCLA because we are one of only a handful of departments of anesthesiology in the U.S. that has an ICU in cardiac surgery. We currently have five rotating cardiac residents who get the opportunity to take care of patients from pre-op to post-op so it's a unique experience for them. This combined cardiac anesthesia / CSICU rotation provides them with a depth of knowledge and experience they wouldn't get anywhere else.

What is your biggest challenge?

The greatest challenge is to put all of the pieces together, allowing our department with its great clinical outcomes, great education and outstanding research opportunities to continue to grow. I believe every resident should be involved to some degree in research, and that is what we strive for here. The good news is we have the patients, the research skills and the residents, so we have all of the elements in place.

What are you doing to keep yourself from becoming a heart patient? Are you heart healthy?

I hope so. I try to sit down for a meal in the evening and not rush myself. But I don't get as much exercise as I'd like. I used to ride my bike in Paris, but I'm afraid to take my bike out in L.A. The traffic here is dangerous for cyclists.

Speaking of meals, don't you miss the food in France?

No, my wife cooks it at home!