Appointments and affiliations
Cardiologist
University of Ottawa Heart Institute
Director
Intensive Cardiac Care Unit
Professor of Medicine (Cardiology)
University of Ottawa
Dr M Labinaz is a staff cardiologist at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute and Professor of Medicine at the University of Ottawa. He is the Director of Structural Cardiac Interventions at the University of Ottawa.
Background
Dr Labinaz completed his medical degree at Queen’s University at Kingston followed by a three-year residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Western Ontario. He then completed his residency in Cardiology at the University of Ottawa followed by a two-year advanced clinical and research fellowship in Interventional Cardiology at Duke University in North Carolina as a Heart and Stroke Research Scholar. He joined the University of Ottawa Heart Institute in 1994.
Dr Labinaz received his certification as a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada (FRCPC) in Internal Medicine in 1991 and in Cardiology in 1992.
He has served in numerous leadership positions at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute. He was the Program Director for Adult Cardiology (2000-2005), Director of the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory and Interventional Cardiology (2004-2015), Director of the Intensive Cardiac Care Unit (2015-2023) and is the current Director of Structural Cardiac Interventions.
He chaired the committee on the delivery of primary percutaneous coronary intervention for the management of acute ST segment elevation myocardial infarction on behalf of the Cardiac Care Network of Ontario and published the consensus report in 2006 which served as the foundation for the current provincial STEMI program. He has been an advisor to the Care Cardiac Network of Ontario. He served on the Executive of the Canadian Association of Interventional Cardiologists (2005-2007). He has served as an examiner in Cardiology for the Royal College of Cardiology. He helped establish and direct the standalone interventional program in Thunder Bay, Ontario. He is a standing member of the Scientific Advisory Committee on Medical Devices used in Cardiovascular Systems for Health Canada.
Dr Labinaz received the Award for Excellence in Continuing Medical Education at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute and at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ottawa in 2010. In 2012 he received the Department of Medicine Vision Award and in 2020 was granted the award for Individual Excellence in Postgraduate Medical Education at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute. In 2025 he was the Department of Medicine Mentor of the Year and in the same year was awarded the Clinical Mentor of the Year for the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ottawa.
Research and clinical interests
Dr Labinaz is involved in all aspects of interventional cardiology including diagnostic angiography, percutaneous coronary interventions and intracoronary imaging. He has a special focus on structural cardiac interventions including transcatheter management of patent foramen ovales, atrial septal defects, and left atrial appendage occlusion. He also performs transcatheter valve interventions including transcatheter aortic valve implantation, mitral and tricuspid valve edge to edge repair and tricuspid valve replacement.
To-date, he has been involved in over 500 peer-reviewed publications, presentations, and book chapters. He has published in prestigious journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, Journal of the American Medical Association, Circulation and Journal of the American College of Cardiology. He has been involved as an investigator in over 100 research studies and has received funding as a principal investigator from the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada and the JP Bickell Foundation. In 2003, in collaboration with Dr Edward O’Brien, he developed and patented a novel drug-delivery catheter. In 2017, he was the first in the world to perform transcatheter left atrial to coronary sinus shunt implantation.
Publications
See current publications list at PubMed.