Towaco Home to NJ Top Doc, Cardiac Entrepreneur

Completing electrical circuits, tinkering with electronic gadgets, and learning about biology; that was how Dr. Nicholas G. Tullo spent his free time as a boy in the Bronx.

Today, Tullo is listed as one of the state's top doctors in the October issue of New Jersey Monthly. Out of more than 20,000 doctors in the state, Tullo was one of 647 featured physicians to be selected by their peers. Tullo’s specialty is cardiac electrophysiology.

The field combines Tullo’s passion for biology with his fascination with electricity.

“I deal primarily with the electrical system of the heart,” Tullo explained. “So anything that has to do with the rhythm. That’s up my alley.”

Electrophysiology is a specific cardiac specialty that diagnoses and treats arrhythmias, or disturbances, in the heart’s rhythm.

“I started studying electrophysiology because it was like a calling for me,” said Tullo.

Tullo is one of six physicians at Consultants in Cardiology in West Orange. In his particular concentration, Tullo uses electrical devices to identify, treat, and, in some cases, cure, irregular rhythms of the heart. Some of those devices include pace makers, implantable cardiac defibrillators, and internal heart monitors.  

"It’s really cool for me,” said Tullo. “It’s like the rocket science of medicine.”

While Tullo treats all forms of cardiac arrhythmias, he also has developed treatments for treating and managing syncope, or fainting.

“It is a distinct part of my practice,” noted Tullo, explaining that more than a million people a year faint. “The doctor is almost never there when a person faints,” Tullo said, so diagnosing the cause of fainting is a lot like being Sherlock Holmes.

Thirty years ago, when Tullo was a resident at North Shore Medical Hospital, a fainting patient would have been admitted to the hospital. However, with today’s technology, Tullo can insert an internal heart monitor. The device records heart activity. If a fainting spell occurs, the monitor provides information about the patient’s internal physical state at the time of the episode.

“Nowadays most of the work-up is done as an out-patient,” he said.

Tullo has created a separate division in his practice for the diagnosis and treatment of fainting called the New Jersey Center for Fainting.

The electrophysiologist attended the Bronx High School of Science, studied biology at Fordham University, attended medical school at Syracuse’s Upstate Medical Center, was a resident in North Shore Medical Hospital, studied electrophysiology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx and at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center in Newark. He founded the electrophysiology department at St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center in Paterson.

Currently, he admits patients to St. Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston and is working to have the hospital create a dedicated syncope center.

Tullo also enjoys a career as an educator. He has served as an associate professor of medicine at Seton Hall University’s graduate medical school, and was a faculty member at the University of Tennessee.

For several year.s he has also participated in research of, and presented lectures about, Medtronic products like ICDs, pacemakers, and internal heart monitors.

On Oct. 19, as the company’s official national spokesperson, Tullo will be part of a media launch for an educational awareness campaign called "Take Fainting to Heart."

Additionally, in the past few months Tullo launched his own series of educational YouTube videos about ECGs and how to read them properly.

“Three to four hundred people a day are visiting my site to learn,” he said.

Health care providers and others can view the basic lessons for free. Ongoing, in-depth, video supplements, called ChalkTalks, are available to subscribers at ECG Academy.

Tullo, who won a Telly in 1995 for a March of Dimes commercial, built his own recording studio in the basement of his home.

With the exception of three years that he spent at the Chattanooga Heart Institute in Tennessee, Tullo and his wife, Lucy, have lived in Montville since 1991. They have three children.

“It’s very gratifying,” Tullo said of his work as a cardiac electrophysiologist, “to know that you keep people around and they get to enjoy life.”