Peter Kowey, MD
Lankenau Hospital, Wynnewood, PA
Peter R. Kowey, MD, is a graduate of St Joseph’s University and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He completed his residency training in internal medicine at Penn State University and was a Fellow in cardiovascular medicine and research at the Harvard University School of Public Health, the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, and the West Roxbury VA Hospital. After this training he joined the faculty at the Medical College of Pennsylvania as Director of the CCU and Arrhythmia Program, and rose to the rank of full Professor. He went on to become Chief of the Division of Cardiovascular Diseases at the Lankenau Hospital, the Main Line Health System and President of the Main Line Health Heart Center, posts held from 1990-2016. Dr. Kowey currently is the William Wikoff Smith Chair in Cardiovascular Research. He is also Professor of Medicine and Clinical Pharmacology at Jefferson Medical College.
Dr Kowey is a Fellow of several professional organizations including the Clinical Council of the American Heart Association, the American College of Cardiology, the American College of Physicians, the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the American College of Chest Physicians, and the American College of Clinical Pharmacology. He was a founding member of the Philadelphia Arrhythmia Group and a charter member of the North American Society of Pacing and Electrophysiology. He has served on numerous committees for each of these organizations including program and abstract review committees for national and international programs. He spent 9 years as a member of the Cardiorenal Drug Advisory Committee, 4 years on the Cardiovascular Devices Committee of the Food and Drug Administration, and was on the Expert Advisory Panel of the US Pharmacopeial convention. Dr. Kowey was a founding member of the Cardiac Safety Research Consortium and serves on its executive committee. He also serves as the chair of the NCDR/ACC AF Ablation Registry Steering Committee.
Dr. Kowey’s principal area of interest has been cardiac rhythm disturbances. He has been the recipient of over 150 grants and has authored or co-authored over 450 papers and scientific reports. His group has participated in a large number of pivotal and global clinical trials, many directed by Dr. Kowey himself. He is the co-editor of 3 textbooks regarding cardiac arrhythmia. He is a referee for manuscript review for 25 journals and sits on the editorial boards of several journals including the Heart Rhythm Journal and the Journal of Cardiovascular Electrophysiology. He has provided consultation to over 100 international pharmaceutical companies and chaired several data and safety monitoring boards and event committees for clinical trials. While working with industry, he has pioneered the development of many antiarrhythmic drugs and antitachycardia devices that are used around the world for the treatment of patients with life-threatening cardiac rhythm problems.
Dr. Kowey has been the recipient of numerous awards including the Edward S. Cooper award from the American Heart Association and the William Osler Award from the University of Miami. Dr Kowey also maintains a busy consultative arrhythmia practice and has been recognized as a leader in his field in several international publications.
Dr. Kowey and his wife, Dorothy live in Bryn Mawr and have three daughters, all attorneys, Susan Kealy, Jaime Shean, and Olivia Kowey, and six grandchildren. Since his retirement as chief of cardiology, Dr. Kowey has taken on a number of non-medical pursuits. He joined the Board of Trustees of St. Joseph’s University in 2015 and
continues to write fiction. His first medical mystery novel, Lethal Rhythm, was published in 2010, followed by Deadly Rhythm in 2012, “The Empty Net: A Philip Sarkis Mystery” in 2014 “Death on the Pole,” in 2016, and his fifth novel, Death by Your Own Device in 2020.