Stephen Hanlon, MD, FACC

About Stephen Hanlon, MD, FACC

Stephen Usher Hanlon, MD, a board-certified cardiologist, earned a Doctor of Medicine at Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C., and a B.S. in zoology at Duke University in Durham, N.C. Dr. Hanlon completed his internship and residency in internal medicine at David Grant Medical Center at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, CA, and a cardiovascular disease fellowship at the Naval Medical Center San Diego, CA.

Dr. Hanlon treats the full breadth of cardiology patients with a focus on cardiac imaging, specifically echocardiography, and on patients with heart failure.

“I chose cardiology as my specialty because the heart seemed very elegant and there were a lot of different things you could do with cardiology,” he says. “It is a microcosm of medicine with elements of surgery, radiology and internal medicine that made it feel very wide open.”

Dr. Hanlon says he has seen considerable advances in the field of imaging and in the treatment of heart failure patients.

“What appeals to me about taking care of heart failure patients, in particular, is that I really get an opportunity to spend a lot of time with them, forming a long-standing relationship with them and their families,” he says. “I help them through difficult times in their life, hopefully to a point where they can be much more functional and have a much better quality of life than when I first met them.”

He admits that often when a patient first sees him with a diagnosis of heart failure they are anxious. “I try to allay some of their fears and explain to them what heart failure is, because it’s a very scary term,” Dr. Hanlon says. “When I started my training, heart failure had a high mortality rate but now it is treated more like a chronic illness like hypertension or diabetes, mainly with medications or a specific cocktail of medications.”

Named a New Hampshire Magazine Top Doctor, Cardiovascular Disease, from 2018-2024, Dr. Hanlon spends his free time running, swimming, cycling and doing road races.

“I’m really into physical fitness,” he says.

Dr. Hanlon also enjoys spending time with his family traveling and attending the theater locally and in Boston and New York.