After he finished his training, he worked as an attending physician in adult and paediatric cardiac surgery in India until 2017, when he moved to the U.S. to pursue a fellowship and received advanced training in congenital cardiac surgery at Children's National. He was a fellow here for three years before joining Stanford University and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital as visiting faculty, and in summer of 2022 he returned to Children’s National organization as an attending cardiac surgeon.

Every day, Dr. Desai gets to exercise his passion, which is helping children with congenital heart diseases: those with holes in the heart, abnormal connections (or both), those with dwindling heart function and many more. "I love to lend my healing touch to hearts that need to be fixed." he says.

He notes that operating on neonates-or new-borns -can be challenging because the tissues in infants are much more fragile. He explains the sutures used on neonates are so small, they are hard to see with the naked eye, so surgeries require modifying glasses - loupes.

Despite the great amount of skill and focus that is required for these surgeries, Dr. Desai says he loves performing them, in part, because he gets to touch upon the lives of families.

"The gratitude we see in their eyes is something that's very precious and very rewarding and that's what keeps us motivated and going day in and day out." he says.