Meet Our Team

Washington Hospital Healthcare System first began offering open heart surgery (Coronary Artery Bypass surgery) to our community more than 30 years ago.

Today, we continue to provide world-class cardiac care and with our affiliation with UCSF Health, we can provide academic-level care with the convenience of local treatment. UCSF is ranked as one of the best hospitals in the nation for Cardiology and Heart Surgery, according to U.S. News & World Report. “Our collaboration gives the community direct access to a level of specialized cardiac care rivaling the most advanced academic centers in the country,” says cardiac surgeon Ramin E. Beygui, MD, Washington Hospital’s medical director of Cardiac Surgery and a faculty member at UCSF Medical Center.

Cardiac Surgeons

Ramin E. Beygui, MD

Ramin E. Beygui, MD, FACS, has concurrently joined UCSF School of Medicine Faculty in the Division of Adult Cardiothoracic Surgery and assumed the position of medical director of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Washington Hospital Health System. Dr. Beygui has practiced cardiac, thoracic, and vascular surgery for the past 15 years at UCLA and Stanford University Medical Centers and will be practicing the entire scope of his experience and expertise. This includes repair of aortic aneurysms and dissections, minimally invasive and cardiac surgery for structural heart disease and coronary disease, and cardiopulmonary transplantation. He has served as the director of Thoracic Aortic Aneurysm at UCLA, the surgical director of lung and heart-lung transplantation at Stanford University Medical Center and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, and medical director of cardiac, thoracic, and vascular surgery at North Bay Medical Center.

Teng Chun Lee, MD

​Teng C. Lee, MD, FACS, joined UCSF as an Associate Professor of Surgery in the Division of Adult Cardiothoracic Surgery. He was previously the Co-Director of the Aorta Center at University of Florida. Prior to that, he founded the Center for Aortic Disease at University of Maryland and also started the highly successful Transcatheter Aortic Valve (TAVR) program there. Originally from Singapore, he graduated from Washington University School of Medicine in Saint Louis. He then went on to a general surgery residency at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland where he was also the Dudley P. Allen Scholar before finishing his cardiothoracic surgery residency at Duke University. He also completed a fellowship in Endovascular/Interventional Radiology at Skåne University Hospital (Lund University) in Malmö, Sweden where he trained under the world-renowned Krassi Ivancev, M.D., Ph.D. and another fellowship in advanced aortic surgery, heart transplantation, and mechanical circulatory support at Duke University. Dr. Lee is one of only a handful of "hybrid" specialists fully cross-trained in both interventional and open surgical techniques for the treatment of complex thoracic aortic disease.

Vascular Surgeons

Gabriel Herscu, MD

​Dr. Gabriel Herscu is a vascular and endovascular surgeon, specializing in minimally-invasive treatment of arterial and venous disease.

Dr. Herscu grew up in Oakland, California where his extended family still resides. He completed a degree in electrical engineering at University of California, Davis before attending medical school at the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine. He obtained his general surgery training at the UC Irvine Medical Center and then a 2-year Vascular and Endovascular Surgery fellowship at the University of Southern California Medical Center in Los Angeles.

Dr. Herscu’s current practice includes General Vascular Surgery as well as Minimally-Invasive arterial and venous treatments. He specializes in office-based treatments for varicose veins and other chronic vein disease. He has dedicated training in Vascular Ultrasound and is Medical Director of the Vascular Laboratory. He provides Endovascular Treatment of Complex Aortic Pathology using the latest Endovascular and Hybrid techniques.