Certified through the American Board of Thoracic Surgery since 1998, Dr. Hartmuth Bittner came to the US from Germany, where he completed extensive graduate and postgraduate studies in areas related to clinical medicine and sports sciences. After immigrating to America, he completed nearly a decade of medical training at Duke University. Dr. Hartmuth Bittner left Duke in 1999 as chief resident of cardiothoracic surgery.

Over the course of his career, Dr. Hartmuth Bittner has accumulated a substantial list of professional accomplishments, including performing the first heart and lung transplants in Central Florida. He also established a new lung transplant program at Florida Hospital Orlando (now AdventHealth Orlando). He directed heart/lung transplantation and served as chief of advanced cardiac surgery at this institution from 2012 to 2015.

For the past year, Dr. Bittner has served as president of the Gulf Coast Cardiothoracic Surgery Institute in Tampa, Florida. He established Gulf Coast Cardiothoracic Surgery with a focus on treating advanced-stage and high-risk patients with a range of minimally invasive surgical procedures.