David J. Sugarbaker, MD, former chief of Thoracic Surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, passed away on August 29, 2018. He was 65.
Dr. Sugarbaker served as chief of Thoracic Surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital for 27 years before stepping down in 2014 to create the Lung Institute at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, TX.
During his dedicated service to the Brigham, Dr. Sugarbaker shaped the Division of Thoracic Surgery into one of the top in the nation. He pioneered the technique of extrapleural pneumonectomy and its application to patients with mesothelioma, developed innovative multimodality therapies and directed translational research programs in this disease that are known worldwide.
Dr. Sugarbaker attended Wheaton College in Wheaton, IL and Cornell University Medical College in New York City. He completed his residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and his cardiothoracic training at the Toronto General Hospital and Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. Following his training, he returned to BWH as chief of the then newly formed Division of Thoracic Surgery. He also served as the Richard E. Wilson Professor of Surgical Oncology at Harvard Medical School. During his tenure at HMS, he mentored many residents in both the General Surgery Program and the Cardiothoracic Program.
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
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.
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.
