Surgery News & Notes

August 29, 2018August 30, 2018

Andrea L. Pusic, MD, Named Joseph E. Murray Professor of Surgery in the Field of Plastic Surgery at Harvard Medical School

Andrea L. Pusic, MD, MHS, FACS, FRCSC, chief of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at Brigham Health has been appointed the Joseph E. Murray Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School.

Andrea L. Pusic, MD, MHS, FACS, FRCSC
Joseph E. Murray Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School
Chief, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Brigham Health
Director, Patient-Reported Outcomes, Value & Experience (PROVE) Center, Brigham Health

Andrea L. Pusic, MD, MHS, FACS, FRCSC, completed her medical degree at the Cumming School of Medicine (University of Calgary) in Canada and master of public health at Johns Hopkins University. She completed a general surgery residency at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, and a plastic surgery residency at McGill University in Montreal, followed by a plastic and reconstructive surgery fellowship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC).

Dr. Pusic is an internationally-renowned innovator and leader in the area of patient-reported outcomes and surgical experience. This is increasingly important in the current health care environment of measuring quality, assessing value and ultimately, influencing how health care is funded. Dr. Pusic leads the Patient-Reported Outcomes, Value & Experience (PROVE) Center at Brigham Health. The scope of the PROVE Center is focused on patient-reported outcomes, patient experience and value-based surgery in surgical patients throughout Brigham Health.

Dr. Pusic’s research focuses on the measurement of quality of life and patient satisfaction in surgery. Dual training in epidemiology and surgery has enabled her to lead a team of experts in psychometrics, quality of life and social science methods to develop, validate and use new quantitative measures to assess patient outcomes. The patient-reported outcomes instrument she developed for breast surgery, the BREAST-Q, has been widely adopted for research and clinical care and serves as the basis for development of other outcome measures in surgery.

Throughout her career, Dr. Pusic has been involved in research studies that seek to better understand the patient perspective on surgical outcomes and experiences. She is principal investigator of a study funded by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) that examines how electronic patient-reporting of symptoms may improve surgical care. Altogether, she has been a principal investigator or co-principal investigator on over $10 million in federal research grants.

Dr. Pusic has authored over 200 scientific articles and book chapters and has mentored more than 24 surgeons during various stages of their academic careers. In 2017, she was awarded the Research Achievement Award from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons/Plastic Surgery Foundation. Dr. Pusic is vice-president of WomenforWomen Reconstructive Surgery and regularly leads surgical camps to provide reconstructive surgery for injured women and girls in the developing world. She is a past board member of the International Society of Quality of Life (ISOQOL) and was recently elected president-elect of the Plastic Surgery Foundation.

August 28, 2018August 21, 2018

Ravindra Uppaluri, MD, PhD, Appointed Inaugural BWH Distinguished Chair in Otolaryngology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital

Ravindra Uppaluri, MD, PhD

Ravindra Uppaluri, MD, PhD, chief of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at Brigham Health and associate professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School, has been appointed the inaugural BWH Distinguished Chair in Otolaryngology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Dr. Uppaluri completed his medical degree and doctorate in genetics at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, MN. He trained in Otolaryngology at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, MO. He remained there as a faculty member for 16 years before moving to Boston with his wife, Chitra Uppaluri, MD, and three children in 2016.

Dr. Uppaluri, a leader in his field, has a deep understanding of head and neck tumor biology as well as integration of radiation, chemotherapy and surgical treatment modalities, including minimally invasive transoral laser microsurgery and endoscopic and open approaches to anterior skull base pathologies. He has been the primary investigator of clinical trials integrating small molecule and immunotherapeutics in the surgical management of head and neck cancers. He also leads a National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded laboratory, focused on basic and translational approaches to head and neck cancers.

August 9, 2018August 9, 2018

Welcoming New Faculty – Antonio Coppolino, III, MD, MSc

Please join us in welcoming Antonio Coppolino, III, MD, MSc, as a new faculty member in the Department of Surgery.

Antonio Coppolino, III, MD, MSc
Associate Surgeon, Division of Thoracic Surgery, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Instructor in Surgery, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Coppolino is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA and received his medical degree from George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences in Washington, DC. He also holds an MSc in Clinical and Translational Science from Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences in New York, NY.

He completed a residency in General Surgery at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York, NY, followed by a residency in Thoracic Surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA. Most recently, Dr. Coppolino completed his fellowship in Heart and Lung Transplantation and Mechanical Circulatory Support also at the Brigham.

He is board certified by the American Board of Surgery and the American Board of Thoracic Surgery.

His research and clinical interests include thoracic surgical oncology, end stage heart and lung disease, mechanical circulatory support, lung and heart transplantation and Ex-vivo lung perfusion.