Looking for a doctor, stat? Top Doctors 2025 features 446 physicians in more than 50 specialties who practice in Montgomery County and Upper NW D.C. (ZIP codes 20015 and 20016). Research company Castle Connolly provided the data for the list.
Here are interviews with four of the doctors who made the list:
Dr. Ankit Shah, Cardiovascular Disease
Dr. Ankit Shah grew up on Long Island, where he spent time playing basketball, baseball and soccer. He’s now a physician in the field of sports and performance cardiology. Shah was the team cardiologist for USA Swimming during the 2024 World Aquatics Swimming Championships in Budapest. He has worked with many local professional sports teams, including the Washington Capitals, D.C. United and the Baltimore Orioles, he says. Shah obtained his medical degree from Tufts University School of Medicine and did his residency at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. When he’s not working, Shah, 41, who lives in Bethesda with his wife and two young kids, enjoys rock climbing. “I’m trying to get my son into it. He’s slowly picking it up,” says Shah, who typically bikes from his home to his practice, Sports & Performance Cardiology in Chevy Chase. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
What do you look for when working with high-performance athletes? One of the most important components when working with elite athletes is making sure you have the skill set to help differentiate healthy athletic hearts from potentially diseased hearts. There’s overlap with certain heart conditions that can be dangerous or lethal with what we call ‘athlete’s heart,’ which refers to structural and functional changes that happen in the hearts of athletes who exercise vigorously at least four to six hours a week. When you have athletes training 20, 30 hours a week, all of our testing has to be interpreted with the right context. Knowing that this athlete’s doing X amount of work—we will get their EKG [electrocardiogram] or ultrasound of the heart, the echocardiogram—we have to interpret that in context: Is this something that makes sense for this athlete, or does it seem like it’s more a disease process?
How has the field of sports and performance cardiology evolved over the years? We continue to formalize the training and education for cardiologists interested in sports cardiology. The first dedicated sports cardiology training program in the country was at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and is where I trained. Since then, new programs have started at Emory University in Atlanta, Atlantic Health system in New Jersey and most recently at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. I worked closely with the team at Hopkins in creating the Johns Hopkins Sports Cardiology Fellowship and I am collaborating faculty for the training program. These programs are for doctors who have completed a general cardiology fellowship and then pursue sports cardiology training. There’s more of a formal process where we have an annual sports radiology course. It’s becoming top of mind with the news over the last few years with cardiac arrests happening to young, healthy athletes. People are now seeking specialists who deal with athletes because the field’s very different than general cardiology.
Do you see many teenage or young adult patients? We work with patients who are aged 16 and above. There’s younger athletes and their families who want to get checked out to make sure their child doesn’t have a potential heart problem. Our data’s been consistent: About one in 300 competitive athletes have an underlying heart condition that puts them at risk of having cardiac arrest. So we have had athletes and families coming in to get checked out to see if there’s anything there. We’ve had a lot of athletes coming in for performance testing to help fine-tune some of their training.
—Ruben Castaneda
Dr. Lucy McBride, Internal Medicine
When she’s not treating patients at her practice, Ackerly McBride Group in Upper Northwest D.C., Dr. Lucy McBride writes the medical newsletter Are You Okay?, hosts the podcast Beyond the Prescription, and has written about health and wellness issues for The Washington Post, The Atlantic and USA Today. McBride, 52, has appeared as a guest on NPR, PBS News Hour and CNN, where she’s advocated for holistic health care. McBride obtained her bachelor’s degree from Princeton University, her master’s in pharmacology from the University of Cambridge as a Fulbright scholar, and her medical degree from Harvard Medical School. She did her residency at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. McBride lives in Northwest D.C. with her husband a few blocks from her parents. McBride is working on her first book, about holistic health, which Simon & Schuster is scheduled to publish next spring. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
How did the idea for the upcoming book come about? The book has been percolating in my mind for probably a decade. The idea for it came from my 25 years as an internal medicine doctor, where I saw firsthand how many patients needed deeper support than what rushed, short office visits allowed. I want to reach and help more people than I can see in a day. I started a Substack newsletter in the pandemic to try to help people navigate all the new information and make the right decisions for themselves on their health, which connected me to tens of thousands of readers. That process made it even more clear to me how many people struggle to access quality primary care because our health care system fails them and they don’t have the tools to advocate for themselves. This book is my way of empowering patients to take charge of their health and become their own strongest medical advocate.
How do you balance the demands of your practice with writing a newsletter, hosting a podcast, doing press interviews and writing a book? I believe that it takes a village. I do all the writing, but I have a team, a lean, mean group of gals who help me with social media, who help me with the formatting on Substack and who help me with the content calendar. I ask for help, I take breaks and I pace myself. I try to practice what I preach.
What do many patients get wrong about what it means to be healthy? They think it’s about a number on a scale or a cholesterol level. They think it’s about a certain diet or lifestyle. They think it’s about a way of eating and exercising that’s prescriptive. Health is a process. It’s about having agency and having tools and information and guidance to manage the everyday risks we face.
—R.C.
Dr. Terrence Sheehan, Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation
In early 2001, Dr. Terrence Sheehan helped open Kessler-Adventist Rehabilitation Hospital in Rockville, a facility that specializes in short-term intensive physical rehabilitation for patients recovering from acute injuries or illnesses. Actor Christopher Reeve, who became wheelchair-bound after fracturing his neck in a horse-riding accident six years earlier, was present for the ribbon-cutting. “I essentially came in with the sheetrock,” says Sheehan, who was then a young physiatrist. The institution grew and rebranded. It’s now known as Adventist HealthCare Rehabilitation, an acute specialty hospital that takes care of patients with brain and spinal cord injuries, stroke, amputations and other ailments. The hospital has facilities in Rockville and White Oak. Sheehan, 61, is now the chief medical officer. Sheehan obtained his medical degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo and did his residency in Boston at Tufts University-New England Medical Center Hospitals. Since 2006, Sheehan, who lives in Potomac with his wife, has led and participated in several educational missions in the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Ecuador. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
What drew you to rehabilitative medicine? I went to a small college that had a rehabilitation institute, and it was there that I was introduced to the foundational aspects of rehabilitation. In medical school I learned there are doctors that are doing rehabilitation. The school had some of the national leaders in rehab medicine. I was turned on by the work, which can involve focusing on someone’s neck or back or thumb pain or catastrophic care. I gravitated to catastrophic care, working with people with spinal cord injuries, stroke and limb loss. These are patients who, when they come to us, are at a lower functional level. Our program helps them achieve a higher functional level, helping them enhance the things that are important in life, regardless of what function they do or don’t have.
What do you say to patients when they are starting their rehabilitation regimen? I recently spoke with a patient who lost their leg below the knee. I went through the nuts and bolts of what the next several months of rehabilitation will look like, then I asked him how he was doing emotionally. I let him know I understand that his life has changed on a dime, and we are here to support and take care of all of him. I wanted to let him know I understand he’s experienced a significant loss and we want to help him through the grief while we build a vision for the future.
Are there certain types of injuries that are more prevalent or on the rise? With an aging population, we have a skewed age group that we’re seeing in the acute rehabilitation hospital. That’s because we see a significant number of people who suffer strokes. Separately, we see many older people who fall. As we get older, we no longer bounce, we break. We see fractures and major trauma. We see a lot of cardiac diseases post open-heart surgery. Cardiac disease is a very common comorbidity for the people we serve in all categories—stroke, amputation, medical debility, reinjury. We take care of a lot of brain injuries beyond stroke.
What do you like to do during your downtime? On my off time I play golf and do gardening and artwork. I have a substantial garden; I plant and prune. I like to sketch in pencil, black and white shadows. I was in a sketching contest when I was in grade school and only now, later in my life, am I picking up that activity again. My wife of 46 years and I enjoy going to museums, bike riding and getting together with friends.
—R.C.
Dr. Oluyemisi Famuyiwa, Reproductive Endocrinology/Infertility
Dr. Oluyemisi Famuyiwa believes it’s her responsibility as a physician to provide the most accurate information about fertility, not just one-on-one with her patients, but also online and over the airwaves. “There’s a lot of social media out there, a lot of misinformation,” Famuyiwa says. That’s why she blogs, posts YouTube videos and puts out podcasts explaining the science of fertility. Famuyiwa obtained her undergraduate degree from Kent State University, her medical degree from Emory University and did her residency at Georgetown University Medical Center. When she’s not treating patients at her practice, Montgomery Fertility Center in Rockville, or sharing fertility facts, she loves reading—particularly books about leadership. She’s read books by John Maxwell and Jack Canfield, and recently finished Dare to Lead by Brené Brown. Famuyiwa, who lives in the Olney area, hopes to publish her first book, The Quest for Fertility, this fall. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
How much are you concerned about the Trump administration’s deep cuts to the National Institutes of Health research? I just think it’s a tragedy. I did my fellowship at NIH from 1993 to 1995. After that, for three years I was doing [lab-based research] at NIH; it was really fun. We were on the forefront of basic science research. I was in a lab where it was so intoxicating doing a lot of hands-on research and going to conferences to present it, to meet our colleagues from all over the world, to exchange ideas. That’s where innovation comes from, that’s where breakthrough comes from. Just as we’re cutting back, China is now leaping to the forefront of such research. Some of the Ph.D. doctors who were in the lab with me are now heading huge hospitals out in China, huge lab organizations.
When should couples or individuals who are dealing with fertility issues see a doctor like you? As soon as possible—when you think about it, dream about it. Traditionally, the correct answer is, if you’ve been trying for a year, or if you’re over the age of 35 [and] you’ve been trying for six months. However, if you’ve been trying for any length of time and you have fibroids or endometriosis or diabetes or polycystic ovary syndrome, don’t wait, there’s no point in waiting. … I encourage my patients—the minute you think about it, don’t wait. What’s the worst thing that can happen? You get an analysis, you get an evaluation, and it says that everything is OK.
What are some of the lifestyle adjustments that couples or individuals can make to try to improve fertility? Fertility is deeply influenced by lifestyle. Maintaining a healthy weight, eating a balanced diet rich in whole foods, moving your body regularly, getting restorative sleep and managing stress is critical. Fertility thrives in a body that is nourished, not inflamed. I counsel my patients to avoid known disruptors like tobacco, excessive alcohol and cannabis. While often portrayed as harmless, cannabis has been shown to negatively affect both egg and sperm quality, disrupting ovulation in women and reducing sperm count in men. A lot of fragrances have been found to have phthalates [endocrine disruptors] that can interfere with the hormonal part of the patient.
—R.C.
This appears in the July/August 2025 issue of Bethesda Magazine.
