News & Events

Quan-Yang Duh M.D., professor and chief of the section of endocrine surgery at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and outgoing President of the Pacific Coast Surgical Association, told a rapt audience of attendees at the organization's annual meeting of his journey as an immigrant, his rescue by a Greek family in 1971, and his work as endocrine surgeon, encapsulated in an inspirational story spanning multiple cultures. Dr. Duh was warmly introduced by fellow UCSF endocrine surgeon and medical historian Wen T. Shen, MD, MA. Below are thoughts and reactions of Dr. Duh's friends, [...]

An article commentary recently published in NPJ Breast Cancer, a Nature Research journal, discusses the WISDOM Study (Women Informed to Screen Depending on Measures of Risk (WISDOM), a groundbreaking clinical trial recruiting 100,000 women from throughout California that will compare annual breast cancer screening with personalized risk-based breast cancer screening. The study is led by Laura J. Esserman, MD, MBA (pictured), professor of surgery and director of the Carol Franc Buck Breast Care Center at the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. She and the other Wisdom Study [...]

Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D, the universally acclaimed mediation instructor and Professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, recently gave the "Second Annual Ellen Hughes Lectureship" in Herbst Hall at UCSF Mount Zion, "The Key to Clinician Wellbeing through Mindfulness: Embodied Practice, Embodied Presence". Kabat-Zinn is world-renowned for developing the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course, a fixture of integrated medicine, and the founding director of Stress Reduction Clinic at UMass.  During the Q&A following his talk, Kabat-Zinn lauded the research [...]

Emily Finlayson, MD, MS, director of the Center for Surgery in Older Adults at UCSF,  was interviewed by Becker's Hospital Review on how hospitals work to prepare at-risk older patients for surgery, screening for frailty and meeting patient's health goals.  Older patients undergo major surgery on a regular basis. However, a number of these patients are at risk for experiencing complications, functional decline and loss of independence after surgery. With this in mind, Emily Finlayson, MD,  professor of surgery and health policy at University of California - San Francisco Medical Center, [...]

The Department of Surgery has launched a new website for its Surgical Skills Center. The program is led by director Edward Kim, M.D., associate director Hueylan Chern, M.D., both associate professors in the Division of General Surgery. The goal of the Center is to maximize learning in the operating rooms by allowing trainees to master basic technical skills and practice operative techniques and principles outside of the operating room. This is accomplished by providing a structured and robust curriculum including inanimate and tissue models that simulate challenges that occur to novices in [...]

Navigating Aging focuses on medical issues and advice associated with aging and end-of-life care, helping America's 45 million seniors and their families navigate the health care system. Surgery can be hard on older adults, resulting in serious complications and death far more often than in younger patients. But many seniors aren't adequately prepared for the risks they might face. Innovative hospitals such as Duke University Medical Center, the University of California-San Francisco Medical Center and Michigan Medicine are working to change that. In the weeks leading up to surgery, they [...]

Carolyn D. Seib, M.D., MAS, a clinical investigator and member of the UCSF endocrine surgery faculty, has been awarded a RAP (Resource Allocation Program) seed grant by the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center to study postoperative cognitive dysfunction in elderly patients undergoing surgery for thyroid cancer. Dr. Seib's project is part of her ongoing research focused on individualizing the surgical care of older adults. With increasing evidence supporting the surveillance of small, low-risk papillary thyroid cancers, the decision of whether to manage thyroid cancer operatively [...]

UCSF Medical Center earned "high performance" ratings – the highest ratings possible – in eight common conditions and procedures in the U.S. News & World Report Best Hospitals Survey for 2017-2018, seven within the UCSF Department of Surgery: Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Repair Aortic Valve Surgery Colon Cancer Surgery Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) Heart Bypass Surgery Heart Failure Lung Cancer Surgery U.S. News evaluated more than 4,500 hospitals to determine how well they performed using data on patient survival, nurse staffing, volume and more. Within the [...]

A new research study shows that patient frailty should be assessed in preoperative planning for surgery in older adults, even for common ambulatory general surgery operations. The study, led by principal investigator and lead author, Carolyn D. Seib, M.D., MAS, a general and endocrine surgeon at UCSF, was reported on in the journal JAMA Surgery and highlighted by the NY Times in a subsequent article. Importantly, the study found that frailty is more closely associated with the risk of complications than  chronological age. It has implications for both treatment planning and informed consent [...]

Courtney A. Green, M.D., research fellow in the General Surgery Residency program, has been awarded a CSERT (Center for Excellence in Surgical Education, Research and Training) grant from the Association for Surgical Education (ASE) Foundation. Her research project is entitled, "Investigation into the Perceptual Expertise of a Robotic Surgeon: How do we learn to feel what we see?" Surgical education grants are among the most difficult to obtain. Moreover, this grant has historically been awarded to faculty affiliated with academic institutions, underscoring Dr. Green's achievement here as a [...]

UCSF Medical Center has been reaccredited as a "Comprehensive Center" for bariatric surgery by the American College of Surgeons (ACS) Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery Accreditation and Quality Improvement Program (MBSAQIP) and American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS). The UCSF Bariatric Surgery Center offers a full range of surgical weight-loss options, including laparoscopic and open Roux-Y gastric bypass, laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy, and laparoscopic and open revisional bariatric surgery. The formal letter from the MBSAQIP to Stanley J. Rogers, M.D., Associate [...]

Quan-Yang Duh M.D., professor and chief of endocrine surgery at UCSF, and a nationally and internationally recognized leader in the field, is the recipient of the 2017 Paul Starr Award from the  American Thyroid Association (ATA). The Paul Starr Award Lecture recognizes an outstanding contributor to clinical thyroidology. Dr. Duh delivered the 2017 lecture for this award entitled, "Technical and Technological Advances that Changed Thyroid Surgery" on October 20th at the ATA annual meeting in Victoria, British Columbia. Here is the full text of the award announcement. October 16, 2017—The [...]

Sandhya Kumar, M.D., MIS/Bariatric Surgery clinical fellow at UCSF, presented her "Top 10" paper, Is laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy safer than laparoscopic gastric bypass? A comparison of complications and mortality using the MBSAQIP data registry, at the 34th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS) during "Obesity Week". Kumar was the lead-off presenter in the ASMBS abstracts 2017 paper sessions on October 31st. Dr. Kumar's paper headlined a strong overall showing by UCSF Bariatric Surgery during "Obesity Week", evidencing the program's strong [...]

In the wake of October's mass shooting at a Harvest country music festival in Las Vegas, Vox News reached out to UCSF trauma surgeon M. Margaret "Peggy" Knudson, M.D., FACS for her thoughts on how doctors manage an influx of mass shooting victims, and the critical techniques for ensuring their patients' survival. Knudson, a professor in the UCSF Department of Surgery at Zuckerberg San Francisco General (ZSFG), is a nationally recognized expert on mass trauma events and war injuries. Currently Medical Director for the Military Health System (MHS) Strategic-ACS Partnership, Knudson served as a [...]

UCSF News reports on the results of study led by Carter Lebares, M.D., assistant professor and director the UCSF Center for Mindfulness in Surgery, to assess burnout in general surgery residents. An online survey was distributed in September, 2016, to all ACGME-accredited general surgery programs. Stress, anxiety, depression, resilience, mindfulness, and alcohol use were assessed and analyzed for prevalence. The results, published online in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons on Oct. 26, 2017, were stunning, finding that "7 of 10 trainee surgeons in the survey experienced burnout [...]

The first advanced laparoscopic course in Northern California, dedicated to the training of Minimally Invasive Surgery fellows and surgical senior residents, was held at the UCSF Anatomy Learning Center on Saturday, August 12, 2017. The course, jointly developed by UCSF and Stanford, and co-chaired by Matthew Lin, M.D. and John Morton, MD respectively, provided a one-day comprehensive experience for senior trainees that included a formal didactic curriculum as well as a hands-on cadaver lab. There were over twenty participant trainees drawn from the following institutions: San Joaquin [...]

The Haile T. Debas Academy of Medical Educators presented seven Department of Surgery faculty with the Excellence in Teaching Award for 2017 at a ceremony on September 11th at the UCSF School of Nursing, held in conjunction with the Academy's induction of new members. The Academy's Excellence in Teaching Awards are peer-nominated, and honor outstanding front-line teachers of medical students, residents, and fellows who often go unrecognized. These teachers create and encourage an intellectually stimulating environment that promotes critical thinking and learning.       Warren J. [...]

Results from the first-in-human clinical trial of a magnetic compression anastomosis device known as "Magnamosis" were recently reported on in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons.  The study, led by Principal Investigator Michael Harrison, MD, is a prospective, single-center, first-in-human pilot clinical trial to evaluate the feasibility and safety of creating an intestinal anastomosis using the Magnamosis device. Magnetic compression anastomosis (magnamosis) uses a pair of self-centering magnetic "Harrison Rings" to create an intestinal anastomosis without sutures or [...]

The UCSF Center for Mindfulness in Surgery was recently awarded grants by the Physicians Foundation and UCSF Medical Center "Excellence Fund" to support a study of mindfulness training of faculty in the Departments of Surgery and Anesthesia. The program, led by Carter Lebares, M.D., Principal Investigator on the study, is also funded by the Department of Surgery, which has supported a similar study by Dr. Lebares in surgical interns.  Physician burnout, which comprises emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and diminished satisfaction with one's work, has been documented in medical [...]

The Spring/Summer 2017 issue of Inside Surgery is now available online. Inside Surgery is a Department of Surgery brochure showcasing the clinical and research advances of our faculty. The edition highlights minimally invasive bariatric surgery to treat metabolic disease, and robotic surgery deployed across a variety of surgical specialties within the Department. The newsletter begins with a tribute to the outgoing Chair, Nancy L. Ascher, M.D., Ph.D. via a letter from the Interim Chair: UCSF Medical Center has long been at the forefront of innovation in every facet of surgery. Our [...]