Nora Eccles Harrison Cardiovascular Research and Training Institute (CVRTI) delivers cutting-edge cell-to-bedside research and education of cardiovascular disease, which is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. At the CVRTI, we are both developing new insights into the biology of heart muscle cells, and developing novel therapeutics for patients with heart failure and cardiac arrhythmias such as sudden cardiac death.

Located at the University of Utah, the CVRTI nucleates a campus wide, multidisciplinary team of fourteen individual investigator laboratories who are both scientists and physician scientists. The research of the laboratories spans from basic muscle biology and channel electrophysiology to metabolism and genetics. Founded in 1969, the CVRTI is one of the oldest cardiovascular institutes in the country, and its research has already impacted clinical care from development of the first artificial heart, to the genetic basis of long QT arrhythmias, to using electricity to map heart dimensions for arrhythmia ablation, to myocardial recovery.

Your heart and your car have more in common than you might think. Both rely on electricity to function properly. In your heart, a series of electrical pathways must work in a carefully choreographed pattern to make the heart muscles move in the right order to get blood out to the rest of your body. When this pattern gets out of sync, it may be a sign of a heart arrhythmia. Special heart experts, known as electrophysiologists, focus on the electrical rhythms of the heart and have tools and options to help fix arrhythmias, including atrial fibrillation, and related issues.