LEWISTON – The Central and Western Maine ICD Support Group will hold its first meeting on Thursday, Feb. 15, at Central Maine Medical Center.

The support group is being created for individuals who have implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICD). Family members and other support persons are welcome.

The meeting will provide a forum for discussion regarding experiences with ICD and will present learning opportunities, not only about living with the devices, but about cardiac health issues.

The meeting will be held from 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. in the chairmen’s rooms on the lower level of the 12 High Street Medical Office Building adjacent to CMMC.

The guest speaker for this inaugural event will be cardiologist Dr. Dan Soroff, Central Maine Heart Associates.

Soroff is an expert in electrophysiology, which involves ICD devices. He completed a cardiac electrophysiology fellowship through the Boston University School of Medicine at Boston Medical Center. He also served a three-year fellowship in cardiovascular medicine through the University of Massachusetts at Worcester Medical Center.

His clinical training experience includes work at the Hospital San Raffaele’s Division of Cardiac Electrophysiology in Milan, Italy.

A graduate of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Soroff earned a master’s degree in physics from Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass. In 1997 he was awarded his medical degree from the State University of New York at Stony Brook School of Medicine. He served a residency in internal medicine at St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Boston.

He has experience as a researcher in medicine and physics, including work at the Harvard University High Energy Physics Laboratory in Cambridge, Mass. His research activities encompassed physics and medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where he was involved with studies undertaken in the cardiac catheterization laboratory and the cardiac arrhythmia service.

He was twice been recognized by Worcester Medical Center for his work as a teacher and was twice recognized for his contributions to patient care. He has authored articles that have been published in scholarly periodicals.

For more information, call physician assistant Joe Sala at 753-3900 or social worker Aaron Landry at 795-2686.