About Me
Q: Can you tell us a little about yourself? Where are you from? Where did you go to medical school, and what have you done since graduating?
I grew up outside of Boston and, after graduating from Boston College, went to medical school at Loyola-Chicago. I matched at Tulane for a residency in general surgery, thinking I would eventually return to the colder climates of my youth. But I am not the first, nor the last, yankee whose heart has been captured by New Orleans. By the time I graduated from residency, I had personal and professional desires to return and serve this community as long as fate would let me. I completed a fellowship in minimally invasive and bariatric surgery at St Luke’s University Health Network in Pennsylvania, honing my skills and giving me perspective that I am eager to bring back to the Gulf South.
Q: What made you choose surgery as your specialty?
My grandfather was a general surgeon at a time when that profession truly reflected the word “general”. But outside of the professional respect that his training and abilities imbued, I was always more impressed with the role he had as a leader and trusted member of his community in Gloucester, Massachusetts. That inspiration at a young age gradually led me to focus on academia and clinical experiences throughout high school and college. The feeling of being able to help people in need, plus the opportunity to work with my hands as my grandfather did, made surgery the only field in which I felt I could be totally fulfilled.
Q: What services do you provide to patients? Are there any services you provide more frequently than others?
“From the neck down, minus bones and reproductive organs” is the technical scope of my practice, but my specialties lie in minimally invasive approaches to intra-abdominal pathologies. This includes conventional laparoscopy as well as robot-assisted laparoscopy to treat diseases of the stomach, intestines, colon, gallbladder, and liver, as well as technically advanced approaches to abdominal wall, diaphragmatic, and inguinal hernias. My true passion, however, is to provide comprehensive bariatric (weight loss) surgical care to my patients. This practice goes well beyond the technical components of performing sleeve gastrectomy, gastric bypass, and revisional procedures, but into the social and personal matters of changing the narrative around the management of obesity and its comorbidities. Too often, morbid obesity is characterized as a failure of will or personality instead of the epidemic that the National Institutes of Health and most leading medical societies of described. This practice will require years of outreach both local and political, but I am eager to put in that work.
Q: Are there any services you provide that are unique or not as common?
My training in advanced laparoscopy and bariatrics goes well beyond sleeve gastrectomy, gastric bypass, and revisional surgeries into laparoscopic approaches to inguinal, diaphragmatic, and ventral hernias. I am also certified in using robotic platforms to facilitate these procedures when necessary. These skills lead to less open surgery, less pain, shorter hospital stays, and quicker recovery for my patients. But most importantly, I am committed to spending as much time as possible with my patients -- in and out of the hospital -- to ensure that apprehensions and questions about new, frightening, and stressful situations are addressed as well as they can be. I cannot understate how important I believe that physician-patient relations are to practicing good medicine.
Q: What steps do you take to improve your patients' outcomes while reducing the cost to them and healthcare in general?
The reduced pain, quicker recovery, and fewer wound complications that laparoscopic surgery affords compared to more traumatic “open” approaches affords demonstrable benefits to cost and quality of care. Furthermore, my training in multimodal pain control and early recovery pathways after surgery reduces the quantity of narcotics used on patients and improves functional status quickly after surgery.
Q: What are your thoughts on population health in general?
Frankly, I find it shameful that bariatric surgery is so infrequently covered by employer-based health care. Despite the reproducible, obvious economic and health benefits of weight loss surgery compared to non-operative treatment, many patients are prohibited from seeking this life-changing therapy because of the short-sighted view of most insurers. The unfortunate result is that less than 1% of patients eligible for bariatric surgery nationwide are ever evaluated for a procedure As the Louisiana State Access to Care Representative of the American Society of Metabolic and Bariatric Surgeons, I hope to make progress on providing this life-saving treatment to more patients in the years to come.
Q: Is there anything personal you can tell your patients and colleagues about yourself?
Please do not begrudge my fandom of the Boston sports teams - one can choose their friends and profession, but not where they grow up!