LEXINGTON — Moving to America to study medicine wasn’t an easy decision for Armaghan Soomro, MD, but it was one that allowed him to further his pursuit of excellence in cardiology.
Soomro grew up in Karachi, Pakistan, where he earned his Doctor of Medicine from Dow Medical College in Karachi, Pakistan, followed by an internship in medical and general surgery at Civil Hospital Karachi. He completed his internal medicine residency and a cardiovascular fellowship at Hofstra Northwell School of Medicine, Northwell Health- Staten Island, New York. He then pursued highly specialized training with an interventional cardiology fellowship at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, Arkansas, and an advanced structural heart disease fellowship at Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, Oregon.
Now a cardiologist specializing in general and interventional cardiology at the Saint Joseph Medical Group in Lexington, a member of CommonSpirit, Soomro feels he has found a home. He holds multiple prestigious certifications and is proficient in a wide variety of transcatheter procedures like TAVR, MitraClip/TEER, Watchman, and complex PCI, including CTOs, as well as peripheral vascular interventions for PAD and limb salvage, which allows him to provide cutting-edge, evidence-based care while exhibiting procedural excellence to ensure positive patient outcomes.
That pursuit of excellence is what drew him to study in the United States.
“Wanting to excel and get more advanced training was something that always lingered in my mind, and I realized that I was limited in my opportunities in Pakistan. Therefore, weighing out my options, I decided to pursue advanced training in America,” he says. “Nevertheless, it did not in any way change the fact that this was a difficult decision. Fortunately, I had traveled enough in my life earlier and was quite comfortable coming to the US. I adapted and acclimatized better and faster than many other people may have.”
Medicine Was the Family Business
The son of two doctors, Soomro says he was influenced by his mother’s career as a cardiologist. His father was an acclaimed orthopedic surgeon in Pakistan as well. Their careers and their passion for medicine pushed him to enter the field of cardiology.
“My mother encouraged me and felt that I had potential in medicine,” he says. “If I did not have those parents, I don’t think I would have known this profession as well and may have never pursued this.”
His decision to do interventional cardiology also came from a desire to have a more “dynamic” specialty.
“I wanted to do cardiothoracic surgery initially,” he says, “but when I did cardiothoracic surgery rotations, I was not as excited about surgery. At that point, I realized that interventional cardiology was something that interested me because it had an array of patient care and outpatient care. It was much more dynamic than surgery.”
KY Bluegrass. Family Friendly. Patient Intensive.
Watching transcatheter heart valve procedures such as TAVR, as well as considering the future they could provide patients, was difficult to ignore. Having shadowed his mother’s practice, he knew what kinds of changes the procedures foretold. Soomro joined CommonSpirit while he was doing his fellowship in Oregon and began working with the Saint Joseph cardiology team in Kentucky in September 2025.
“Lexington is a great city,” he says. “I didn’t know much about it prior to coming in here, but I’ve found that it has a lot to offer, both socially and recreationally. It’s a vibrant town. I have a young daughter. It’s a very family-friendly city and offers of lot of activities for us as a family.”
But Kentucky provides challenges as well in treating cardiology patients, he says. The prevalence of heart disease in the state is already becoming clear to him.
“I’ve seen enough to understand that the spectrum of cardiac disease that we have is extremely advanced, extremely challenging,” he says. “In addition, we have some patients who are challenged socio-economically and educationally, and that adds to the complexity.”
The key, he says, is to spend time with patients and educate them so cardiologists can find the best treatment options for them.
“I believe in having a patient-physician partnership, as opposed to dictating what my plan is. I want patients to have buy-in and understanding, because these are very challenging and advanced procedures that we do,” he says. “We want them to understand the challenges that we deal with, and at times we have to come up with creative plans in order to best serve our patients and give them the treatment they deserve and require.”
Have Medicine. Will Travel.
Because he deals with a wide variety of cardiac issues, Soomro’s patient profile changes. Generally, his patient population is age 50 plus and more likely to be male than female. While the practice does both inpatient and outpatient services, much of his patient population tends to come from the southern part of the state. That sometimes requires that he travels to them, instead of them coming to him.
While his practice is just getting started, he envisions doing more outreach in rural parts of the state. In those cases, Soomro says he will be traveling to ares where he can assess and understand rural patients and bring them care closer to their homes.
“In some of the procedures I do, patients are in a much more advanced stage, so it poses an extra challenge for them to make their way from home, which may be several hours driving each way,” he says. “If you imagine doing four or five hours of driving back and forth just to see a doctor, it can get extremely challenging for these elderly patients and they don’t always have the resources for that.”
Even though he is just starting out, he is already making some strides toward bringing cardiology care to more rural areas of the state.
“I’ve made my way to London already, and I’m planning to meet colleagues in other parts of the state in our other facilities,” he says. “We have a very collaborative and collegial relationship. We’ve started collaborative meetings to engage, understand, and empower our patients, as well as to empower providers in the rural settings that they are in to give them a resource to refer their patients to.”
Those relationships can help introduce some of the newer techniques and treatments to patients who may need them.
The Saint Joseph Health Structural Heart Program
“Structural heart disease is a unique field because it has a combination of several things— new imaging, new devices, advanced interventional techniques — and that is what makes the field exciting and challenging for me,” Soomro says.
Among the new devices coming onto the market soon are commercial therapies for aortic valve regurgitation, mitral valve replacement procedures, and tricuspid valve clips, among others. Bringing those new devices and therapies to the Bluegrass is something Soomro says is a priority for him.
“All of these are being utilized now on a national level, and we will get them into our system in the near future,” he says. “Cardiac CT has also advanced further. We are developing a comprehensive cardiac CT program, which is used not only for structural work, but also for other cardiac procedures, interventional procedures, coronary PCI procedures, and CT surgery procedures. These are the things we are discussing and developing further so that we can serve our patients in a better manner with excellent patient care for them.”
Looking Back and Forward
Soomro’s love for cardiology came not only from his mother, but from a desire to be on the cutting edge of cardiac intervention.
“When I was in medical college, transcatheter heart valves and TAVR were just coming in. I remember seeing them and being amazed. I felt that the future was so bright, it was very difficult to ignore, and it really piqued my interest,” he says.
For now, the future of cardiology is in his hands as he works on the wide array of patients presented to him in the Kentuckiana region. And, he says, he’s excited to be a part of that.
“There’s a lot of growth in cardiology being done in the region, especially at Saint Joseph Health. That was something I was excited to be a part of and grow myself, as well as the program,” he says. “I’m also involved in some active leadership decision-making with the cardiology division, especially in structural heart. That was something that excited me. So, the combination of the clinical administrative and the growth aspects of the program is something that I felt was a great opportunity.”
Saint Joseph Medical Group 1401 Harrodsburg Rd • Suite A 300 Lexington KY 40504 (859) 276-4429