Dr. Pat Sylla is the current Division Chief of Colon and rental Surgery in Mount Sinai in New York. She was born in Paris, grew up in the Ivory Coast in West Africa, and went to college and medical school in the US. She also completed her residency and fellowships in colorectal surgery and minimally invasive surgery. She's probably best known as on…

In this latest episode of Surgeons Lives, Steve Stain recalls his journey from infancy in San Antonio, Texas, to growing up near Fresno in California and entering College and Medical School. He certainly started with the basics, draining pus for his boss in a drug abuse practice. He describes being supported by some outstanding mentors in his early…

David Linehan MD is the current Dean and CEO of the University of Rochester School of Medicine and the Medical Center. He grew up in Boston having lost his father as a toddler. Despite living in the tough streets of Dorchester - Whitey Bulger and all that stuff - he learned that education and hard work would lead him to a better life. Academic achi…

Latest episode of #Surgeonslives #Stuffthatmatters has landed with an interview with another surgeon from the UK Gill Tierney is a force of nature. A general and colorectal surgeon who works in the midlands of the UK she rose to become the second woman elected President of the Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland. By her own admissi…

Nat Soper is one of the best known laparoscopic surgeons worldwide. He was there at the very beginning and was definitely one of the true innovators in laparoscopic, minimally invasive, natural orifice surgery. He is currently the Chair of Surgery at Banner health in Phoenix, but that was never his intention! He describes in this interview, a stell…

Tom Watson is a thoracic surgeon of excellence and works at Corewell Health in Michigan. A Midwestern boy by background he became part of the USC esophageal gang under the mentorship of Tom DeMeester. He then spent 20 years at the University of Rochester where he rose through the ranks to become Professor of Surgery and then in 2016 moved to become…

Phil Schauer is one of the nations best known bariatric surgeons. He spent many years and rose to fame in the world of metabolic surgery when in the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio before recently moving to Louisiana and the Pennington Research Institute where he continues to make a difference to patients with morbid obesity and metabolic syndrome. In thi…

Tom Varghese, MD, is the chief of the section of Thoracic Surgery at the Huntsman Cancer Institute in Utah. He's also many other things, including the president of the Society of University Surgeons and one of the founders of the Strong for Surgery program in the American College of Surgeons. He's been NIH funded for quite some time now and is heav…

Scott Silvestry MD is the current Division chief of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery at the University of Arizona, Tucson. But he is so much more than that. He was drawn to Medicine and Surgery by family tragedy, leaving the close community of the Bronx to become a doctor. He spent his formative residence years in Duke, or he had the opportunity to learn mu…

Mary Hawn is the Chair of Surgery at Stanford and a highly successful academic general surgeon. For her, life started on the shores of Lake Michigan but after medical school she spent time in Oregon doing a fellowship before joining the UAB faculty in Birmingham. She spent 14 years there rising to become Division of General Surgery. Along the way s…

Nick Stafford OBE retired a few years ago as Professor of Head and Neck Surgery at the University of Hull in the UK. However, there is way more to Nick that his surgical achievements. As Co-founder of the Daisy Appeal Charity his leadership raised many, many millions and the creation of a unique PET scanning center in Hull - achievements acknowledg…

David Rothenberger came from the humblest of beginnings in South Dakota with no plans for college never mind a stellar career in surgery. He witnessed family tragedy with two infant deaths and decided immediately to become a doctor. And so he did with a combination of government loans and scholarships. He liked the look of the Princeton brochure so…

In this latest episode of #Surgeonslives we hear from Professor John MacFie who is now happily retired from a stellar career in surgery in the UK. Rising to the Presidency of #ASGBI he was a superb clinical surgeon, researcher and mentor of many. His views on that part of life are worth listening to as always. However, he also discusses what has ve…

Professor Sir Neil Mortensen grew up in a humble and evangelical family, went to medical school as something worthy and became a surgeon probably because of a student mentor. After that, there was no stopping him as he rose through the ranks to the very, very top as a world renowned colorectal surgeon and most recently President of the Royal Colleg…

Herb Chen is a pretty accomplished guy when you think about it! Having said that, I have accused him of being worryingly organized! Dr. Chen is Chair of the Department of Surgery at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), the Surgeon-in-Chief of UAB Hospital and Health System, and the Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the UAB Hee…

Professor Ronan O'Connell was born and raised in Dublin and still lives there today with his wife Pauline. He became a colorectal surgeon almost by chance during a research fellowship and then rose to the very top in everything he touched - Chair of Surgery, President of RCSI and ESA, Editor of the world's most successful surgery textbook. In this …

Justin Dimick is of course one of the nest known and highly successful surgical academics in the US. First and foremost he is a passionate surgeon with a mission to improve the outcomes for his patients as well as patients worldwide through "understanding the data". A Health Services Researcher par excellence he has co-authored some of the seminal …

Liane Feldman is the Chair of Surgery at McGill in Montreal and not that long ago was President of Sages. She is Canadian through and through and has spent almost all of her career in her home city. Naturally she is a "Habs" hockey fan and avid outdoors enthusiast - running, cycling and skiing or simply being at her lakeside cottage. A recent empty…

Tracy Hull has been part of the furniture at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio for 3 decades. A self-confessed "plodder" she has nonetheless reached the top of the mountain as a colorectal surgeon and fierce patient advocate. Born into the family veterinarian business she was closing surgical wounds with her dad from the earliest of years so perhaps it …

Professor Sir Norman Williams is a big cheese in many areas. First off, he has been a big name in the colorectal surgery field for decades, contributing so game-changing papers on rectal cancer and pelvic floor diseases. I first met him in 1984 so this was a fascinating discussion for us both. Alongside the clinical and research achievements, he be…

Frederick L Greene MD - Rick to his innumerable friends and colleagues - has been at the center of the cancer world for decades. Known for his long-standing editorial role with the AJCC Staging Manual he served as Chair of the Commission on Cancer at the American College of Surgeons. He remains passionate about the role of Cancer Registries and mos…

Jim Fleshman is the Chair of Surgery in Dallas - he moved to Baylor about a decade ago after a stellar career almost entirely at Wash U in St. Louis. Born in New Orleans he essentially grew up in Bangor in Northern Ireland in the midst of "The Troubles" before the family moved to the Mid-West where he spent most of his adult life. An early advocate…

Joep Knol is a Dutch surgeon who has worked for many years in Belgium where his reputation for technical mastery and educational innovation has produced global recognition. His iLapp foundation was started to try and produce a new pathway for teaching surgery which has become a passion. Growing up an undersized kid in Nigmegen - remember the movie?…

Andrew Stevenson is one of Australia's foremost Colorectal Surgeons. Brought up in Melbourne he was there at the start of laparoscopy during his Fellowship in Brisbane - where he has stayed for all of his Consultant career. However, it would be a mistake to think he is a home boy. He travelled alone from Melbourne to Vancouver when he was 14 - and …

Tim Pawlik seems to do it all - Surgical Oncologist, Researcher, Chairman - as well as a huge sports fan (Buckeye and Boston), family man and devoted fish watcher. Trained in Boston, Michigan and Texas he landed in Johns Hopkins for 5 years where he hones his craft as an HPB surgeon before becoming Chair of Surgery at Ohio State in Columbus some 7 …

Neil Hyman reached the top in colorectal surgery having realized he was too slow and short to be a professional basketball player. The NBA will never know what they missed! Growing up in New York he trained with giants like Randy Steinhagen and Vic Fazio before spending the bulk of his career at the University of Vermont and then finally the Univer…

David Rattner has had a stellar career in surgery and his academic achievements should be an inspiration to all surgeons. Decades of clinical and innovation contributions in Boston where he was a fixture at MGH brought many awards including his personal ambition of being a full Professor. President of SAGES followed along with mentoring many young …

John "Tarp" Tarpley is quite simply a force of energy - blessed with an excellent thyroid gland he says! Despite being long past "retirement" age he continues to work as a huge force for good in African surgery driven by a passion for teaching and his lifelong personal faith. He is a legend in Vanderbilt where he was Program Director for many years…

Undoubtedly one of the most famous surgeons in the world, Steve Wexner has his fingers in so many pies. He should have followed the family tradition and become a lawyer, judge or politician - but then he might have ended up on the Supreme Court or in the White House! As it is, he has been a leader of countless organizations and President of many. A…

This is a special interview you should definitely not miss. First a disclaimer - Vivian has been a friend since we were medical school classmates more than 40 years ago!! For the first half hour Vivian describes his early career in Ireland and Canada as a GP before retiring to Ireland after a family tragedy. Stumbling into some surgery training job…

On paper Keith Lillemoe MD is the Chair of Surgery at Mass Gen Hospital where he has been for 12 years. Before that he was Chairman in Indiana after 29 years in Baltimore where he was a medical student, resident and highly successful HPB surgeon. However, there is much more than that as you will hear during this interview. He is a BIG sports fan an…

Neil Floch is so much more than a Yale Bariatric Surgeon working in Greenwich, CT. He is a passionate advocate for changing the way society views obesity, manages obesity and approaches obese patients. Medicine and surgery is the family business but dealing in comic books and oil painting perhaps less so. Neil is one of the stars of social media an…

Julie Freischlag is one of the biggest names in surgery and her CV record of achievements is truly impressive. But there is so much more to her story than the extraordinary CV. A vascular surgeon par excellence, Academic Chair, CEO and Dean and President of the American College of Surgeons would be remarkable enough but her journey through life is …

Pascal Fuchshuber is a Franco-German Yank - OK? Brought up in France with an Austrian name and trained in Germany he was dispatch by his boss to Texas for a Research Fellowship - and never went home again. Brief stints in Boston resulted in a career as a Surgical Oncologist in Kaiser for more than 20 years. Now he is an enthusiastic acute care surg…

Professor Julio Mayol talks to us from his home town of Madrid, Spain about his journey through academic surgery, to administrative leader and innovator in the exploding world of Social Media and Surgery. He also reminds us how small a world surgery can be when we hear about his mentors Jeff Matthews and Julio Aguilar-Garcia - three musketeers for …

Mark Coleman is a Colorectal Surgeon in the UK who is perhaps best known for spreading the word globally about Lapco - the UK model of teaching laparoscopic colorectal surgery that has been adopted in many countries and definitely broadened its horizons! Mark spent is early life in South Africa and from his earliest days was something of a car nut.…

Eric Pauli is something of an odd-ball in several ways - he agrees BTW!! Surgical endoscopists are rare birds and he is certainly one of the most prominent in the field. Interventional techniques are his passion such as closing fistula defects and repairing leaks. Reconstructing abdominal wall defects is another favorite pastime and has resulted in…

Sonia Ramamoorthy is a current star of the world of colorectal surgery. soon to be President of ASCRS she has managed to balance professional excellence, administrative workload and Society leadership with the much more important work of successful family life - always a challenge but something of which she is rightly proud. Listen to her story of …

Barry Salky is a special guy - innovator, surgeon, wine and food enthusiast as well as an award winning lecturer and one of the legends of advanced laparoscopy and MIS. Listen to and watch this latest episode of #surgeonslives and hear his story from the start in Tennessee, a career in Mount Sinai to the mountains of Colorado where he now spends mu…

This is a truly different story. Dr. Bobby Mukkamala shows us around his amazing car collection in Flint, Michigan where he has been in private ENT practice for 20+ years. A community activist, philanthropist and ENT surgeon, he is determined to rejuvenate his home town using his cars and his restaurants and love for the place he was born. As his c…

For those of you who always wanted to do something adventurous this is a must watch. Fabio and Kristen Potenti sold their house, packed their bags and with one small dog started a new life aboard a large catamaran and sail the oceans. The interview was made when they were in the Panama Canal and about to start a Pacific crossing - yes, you read tha…

Sports injury orthopedic surgeon Nick Colyvas takes us on a journey from his early life in a close Greek community in Southern Africa, to moving to the USA as a fresh faced teenager and then back to medical school in Johannesburg. San Francisco (and of course UCSF where is is a Professor of Surgery) has been his home for most of his career. Along t…

This is the story from George Fielding, bariatric legend from Brisbane and more lately New York. He describes how it all started for him and his travels from Australia to, Scotland, England and Switzerland before establishing himself back in Australia as a pioneer of the Lap Band. Having inserted 1000's he then had one himself more than 2 decades a…

Robbie Madoff tells us how he went from school in Boston and Medical school in Harvard to residency in Minnesota - where is almost gave up surgery as uninteresting! Thankfully, a gap year traveling got him back on tract and a stellar career of think and contributing in Minnesota and beyond. 10 years as Editor-in-Chief is discussed, as well as his c…

Jeff Matthews is Chair of Surgery at U Chicago and right up there in Academic Surgery. He is an advocate for DEI and determined to bring about change. His Spotify profile(!!) says his main job is as a rock musician with compositions, albums and a collection of guitars to his name!! Enjoy his story and views on life.…

Say hello to this new podcast Surgeon's Lives - also available on YouTube @Surgeonslives. We talk to surgeons about their professional career and journey as well as their life passions, hobbies and interests - Stuff That Matters!Oleh John Monson

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