The Gastrointestinal and Endocrine Surgery Division of the Department of Surgery provides clinical coverage at Parkland Memorial Hospital, VA North Texas Health Care Services (Dallas), Zale Lipshy University Hospital and St. Paul Hospital. Our primary mission is to provide excellence in patient care, resident and student teaching and research. During the past several years there has been significant growth in all these areas.
We successfully recruited, Edward H. Livingston, M.D., FACS to fill the Hudson-Penn Chair in surgery and serve as our new Division Chief. Dr. Livingston hails from UCLA where he attended medical school and completed his residency in general surgery, remained on the faculty and ultimately rose to the rank of Professor of Surgery. While at UCLA he initiated a bariatric surgery program which became one of the largest academic bariatric surgical programs in the United States. He also was the Chair of the Department of Surgery and service line director for surgical and perioperative care at the Greater Los Angeles VA Health Care system. Dr. Livingston has numerous publications in the field of bariatric surgery and basic science research. He replaced Dr. Robert V. Rege, the prior division chief who is now the Department Chairman. The Division has a strong colorectal surgery program under the direction of Edward Livingston.
Dr. Mark Watson was trained at the prestigious Washington University School of Medicine where he received intensive exposure to advanced laparoscopic techniques. He then entered private practice in Northern California and had considerable experience in advanced laparoscopy, a major focus of the practice group. He moved to Texas and returned to academics last year. Dr. Watson has extensive experience in all forms of laparoscopic surgery and has developed an active private practice as well as teaching students and residents in the SCMIS lab and Parkland Hospital.
Endocrine surgery case volume has been rapidly growing and is staffed by Dr. William Snyder, Shelby Holt and Fiemu Nwariaku . Dr. Snyder has been at UT Southwestern since 1971. Amongst the most popular attending surgeons with the residents, he has trained generations of Texas surgeons. Numerous teaching awards have been deservedly bestowed upon Dr. Snyder. An outstanding clinical surgeon, he has narrowed his clinical practice to that of endocrine surgery. He has attracted numerous referrals that give our residents sufficient case volumes during their training to ensure their competencies for these complicated procedures. The endocrine practice that Dr. Snyder built has also served as the base for the academic development of Drs. Holt and Nwariaku.
Dr. Holt has been on our faculty for two years and has an excellent rapport with her patients as well as outstanding clinical outcomes. Dr. Holt’s academic interests have been in resident education and she chairs the curriculum committee for the UT Southwestern general surgery residency program. Dr. Nwariaku continues to excel in his research productivity, having two major peer-review funded grants and numerous publications. He also provides clinical service at the VA and participates in the endocrine surgery practice at the main University campus.
The bariatric surgery program is very active under the leadership of David Provost, M.D. The full range of bariatric surgery services is available at UT Southwestern. Ranging from open Roux-en-Y gastric bypass to minimally invasive laparoscopic banding placement. The most commonly performed weight loss operation at UT is the laparoscopic gastric bypass, which is associated with a very low morbidity and mortality rate. The procedures are performed both at Zale Lipshy and Parkland Memorial Hospital. In collaboration with Dr. Scott Grundy, the author of the NIH consensus statement that defined the scope of bariatric surgery in the United States, very active research programs are being pursued. Dr. Provost has led numerous minimally invasive educational programs for community-based surgeons in the performance of laparoscopic procedures. Currently there is a minimally invasive fellowship training program. Previous fellows include Dr Craig Chang, Srzinivas Kaza, and Nandakishore Dukkipati.. This years fellow is Dr. Farid Kehdy.
The Southwestern Center for Minimally Invasive Surgery (SCMIS) is a multi-disciplinary program administered by the Division of Gastrointestinal Surgery. The Center has received substantial industry support and has evolved into a state of the art program. Numerous minimally invasive conferences and programs are sponsored by SCMIS. The educational and conference facilities were recently constructed and are amongst the most modern available. The primary focus of SCMIS includes teaching programs for both residents, students and community surgeons. We also have impressive research facilities for the development of new technologies in the rapidly advancing arena of minimally invasive surgery.
The volume in pancreas and hepatobiliary surgery has expanded at a rapid rate.
Recently Dr. Rebekah Naylor returned to Dallas from many years of missionary work in India. She joined the faculty on a part-time basis and has been an invaluable resource to our students and residents in their surgical education. She brings to us a significant knowledge of third world medicine adding an educational dimension that most other residents and medical students are not exposed to.
Education is of paramount importance to the Division. Virtually every general surgical resident trained in the last thirty years has utilized the Selected Readings of General Surgery to implement their training and provide board review. Selected Readings continues to have strong international distribution. Its founder Dr. Robert McClelland remains on the faculty and still single-handedly edits each edition. Dr. Rebekah Naylor is a general surgeon in the division and administers the student education programs.
Basic science research is an important component of the Division’s activities.
