Kathy E. Sietsema, MD is a Professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Dr. Sietsema received her M.D. from Northwestern University School of Medicine and postgraduate training in Internal Medicine at The University of California at Davis, CA, and the University of Washington in Seattle WA, followed by fellowship training in Pulmonary Diseases at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. She was a full time faculty member of the Harbor UCLA Medical Center for 40 years including 14 years of as Chief of the Division of Respiratory & Critical Care Medicine.
Dr. Sietsema’s academic interests are in clinical exercise physiology and the use of cardiopulmonary exercise testing in clinical practice and clinical research. She has conducted original, federally sponsored and industry sponsored clinical research involving assessment of physical functioning and exercise performance in a wide range of chronic diseases including pulmonary hypertension, chronic heart failure, congenital heart disease and chronic lung diseases. She is director of a longstanding postgraduate course on Cardiopulmonary Exercise Testing, lectures at national venues on aspects of exercise testing in clinical contexts, and is co-author of a leading textbook on this subject.