General Info

Nils Johnson, MD, MS, is a professor of medicine at McGovern Medical School at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth Houston). Dr. Johnson cares for patients in the cardiac care unit and hospital wards, practices interventional cardiology in the catheterization laboratory, interprets SPECT and PET perfusion images, and sees outpatients in clinic. His clinical interests span all of cardiology with a special focus on using pressure and flow measurements to clarify the diagnosis and select optimal treatment. He seeks to improve patient care by applying clinical physiology, both non-invasive perfusion imaging and invasive pressure measurements. Dr. Johnson grew up equally in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada; Houston, TX; and Tulsa, OK (his father was in the oil industry). During high school, he became an Eagle Scout, played violin in the All-State Orchestra, and then spent an exchange year in Witzenhausen, Germany. Dr. Johnson completed his undergraduate degree in physics and computing at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and completed medical school at Columbia University in Manhattan. At Northwestern University in Chicago, he earned an internal medicine residency, cardiology fellowship, an interventional cardiology fellowship, and a master’s of science degree in epidemiology and biostatistics. During 2015-2016, he spent an academic sabbatical year emphasizing invasive coronary physiology with Dr. Nico Pijls at the Catharina Hospital in Eindhoven, Netherlands. Dr. Johnson is board certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine in Cardiovascular Disease and Interventional Cardiology, plus subspecialty credentials in Nuclear Cardiology. His research with his mentor, Dr. K. Lance Gould, started in 1999. This research focuses on clinical coronary physiology, from non-invasive perfusion imaging to intracoronary hemodynamics. Dr. Johnson served as the principal investigator for international trials in coronary physiology like CONTRAST (NCT02184117) and DEFINE-FLOW (NCT02328820). Current projects include quantitative FFR pullbacks (PPG registry, NCT04789317) and novel aortic valve physiology (SAVI-AoS, NCT04514250). He has lectured in 19 countries across four continents and contributed to over 140 publications. Dr. Johnson is a full professor of medicine and holds the Weatherhead Distinguished Chair of Heart Disease.