Surgeons, trainees, and others were honored with special awards presented during Clinical Congress 2023. They include:
Distinguished Service Award
Ronald M. Stewart, MD, FACS (San Antonio, TX)
Owen H. Wangensteen Scientific Forum Award
Monica M. Bertagnolli, MD, FACS (Boston, MA)
Inspiring Women in Surgery Award
Sujana S. Chandrasekhar, MD, FACS (New York, NY)
Distinguished Lifetime Military Contribution Award
Jonathan Woodson, MD, MSS, FACS, MG, MC (Bethesda, MD)
Distinguished Philanthropist of the Year Awards
- 2022: Kenneth W. Sharp, MD, FACS (Nashville, TN)
- 2023: Retired Colonel Kirby Gross, MD, FACS (Camden, NJ)
ACS/Pfizer Surgical Volunteerism and Humanitarian Awards
- Academic Global Surgeon Award: Andrea Parker, MD, FACS, and Robert Parker, MD, FACS (Bomet, Kenya)
- Domestic Surgical Volunteerism Award: Ala Stanford, MD, FACS (Philadelphia, PA)
- International Surgical Volunteerism Award: Andrew N. Kingsnorth, MB, BS, FACS (Plymouth, UK)
- Resident Surgical Volunteerism Award: Youmna A. Sherif, MD (Houston, TX)
- Military Surgical Volunteerism Award: Kerry P. Latham, MD, MHPE, FACS (Washington, DC)
- Surgical Humanitarian Award: Charles J. Filipi, MD, FACS (Omaha, NE)
Advocate of the Year Award
Jason P. Wilson, MD, MBA, FACS (Clearwater, FL)
RAS-ACS Outstanding Mentor of the Year Award
Daniel M. Relles, MD, FACS (Allentown, PA)
Jameson L. Chassin Award for Professionalism in General Surgery
Mark Fleming II, MD, MS (Charlottesville, VA)
Resident Award for Exemplary Teaching
Taylor M. Coe, MD (Boston, MA)
Joan L. and Julius H. Jacobson II Promising Investigator Award
Juliet A. Emamaullee, MD, PhD, FRCSC, FACS (Los Angeles, CA)
History of Surgery Poster Competition
- First Place: Carine S. Dornbush, MD, and Patrick McGonagill, MD FACS (Iowa City, IA): “Resurrectionists: Grave Robbing and the Genesis of Legal Access to Cadavers for Medical and Surgical Education in 1870s Iowa”
- Second Place: Alexandra Tedesco, MD (Boston, MA): “Performing under Intense Pressure: Major Abdominal Surgery in a Pressurized Diving Chamber”
CoC State Chair Outstanding Performance Awards
- Nebraska CoC State Chair: Quan Ly, MD, FACS (Omaha)
- Tennessee CoC State Chair: James McLoughlin, MD, FACS (Knoxville)
CoC Cancer Research Paper Competition
Clinical Research
- First place: Lauren M. Janczewski, MD, MS, “Identifying Barriers to Completion of Radiotherapy: Baseline Findings of a Commission on Cancer National Quality Improvement Project”
- Second place: Mohamed Aly, MD, “Long-Term Survival after Surgical Resection for Rectal Cancer Is Associated with Textbook Outcome but Not Surgical Case Volume ”
- Third place: Mohamed Aly, MD, “Volume Isn’t What It Used to Be – Reconsidering the Minimum Case Volume Threshold for Lung Cancer Resection”
Medical Student Program Poster Awards
Basic Science
- First place: Zachariah Lee (Baltimore, MD): “Gut Microbiota Species Differentially and Directly Affect Regulatory T Cell Recruitment to Secondary Lymphoid Organs in a Transplant Surgery Model”
- Second place: Mohannad Natheef and Abu Haweeleh (Doha, Qatar): “Antibacterial and Antibiofilm Activity of Novel Nanofibers Bandage Formulated with Juniperus Communis Essential Oil Targeting Antibiotic Resistant Bacterial Strains”
Clinical Science
- First place: Erin Kim (Ann Arbor, MI): “Effectiveness of Novel Supermagnetic Iron Oxide Nanoparticle in Reducing Unnecessary Sentinel Lymph Node Biopsies”
- Second place: Abbygale Willging (Iowa City): “Weary and Winded: Frailty Scoring Predicts Pneumonia in Thoracolumbar Fracture Patients”
Education, Innovation, or Outcomes
- First place: Rashmi Bharadwaj (Lexington, KY): “Pancreas Transplant Outcomes in Patients Living with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (PLWH) Infection”
- Second place: Ila Sethi (Stony Brook, NY): “The Impact of Interval Cholecystectomy Timing after Percutaneous Transhepatic Cholecystostomy on Post-operative Adverse Outcomes”
Owen H. Wangensteen Scientific Forum ePosters of Exceptional Merit
- Eren Berber, MD, FACS (Cleveland, OH): “Comparison of Perioperative Outcomes in Patients with Graves’ Disease Undergoing Total Thyroidectomy with or without Near-Infrared Auto-Fluorescence Imaging”
- Charlotte Berry, MD (Rochester, MN): “Grafting of Human Foreskin onto Murine Dorsum Provides a Novel Model of Chronic Radiation-Induced Fibrosis”
- JC Chen, MD (Columbus, OH): “The Effect of Medicaid Expansion on Low Value Surgery in Patients with Breast Cancer”
- Heather Galindo, MD (Middletown, NY): “Effectiveness of Amisulpride in Preventing Postoperative Nausea and Vomiting after Sleeve Gastrectomy: A Pilot Medical Use Evaluation”
- Yekaterina Khamzina, MD (Pittsburgh, PA): “Derivation and Validation of the Risk Analysis Index Frailty Score Using Administrative Data”
- Brittany Levy, MD (Lexington, KY): “Standardization of Root Cause Analysis Selection: Are We Missing Opportunities for Improvement?”
- Eva Liu, MD (Saskatoon, SK): “Chronic Subdural Hematoma Drainage under Local vs General Anesthesia: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis”
- John Lu, MS (Whippany, NJ): “Meta-Analysis of Single-Cell Transcriptomics Data of Cardiac Fibroblasts Reveals Temporal Heterogeneity of Cardiac Fibroblast Response after Myocardial Infarction”
- Scott Mu, MD, MHS (South Orange, NJ): “Comparing Clinical Outcomes and Hospitalization Charges Between Robotic vs Video-Assisted Thoracosopic Lobectomy for Lung Cancer: A Propensity Score Analysis”
- Hannah Sur (New Haven, CT): “Differences in Perceived Sociocultural Barriers to Kidney Transplantation for Minority Patients”
- Nan Zhang, MD (Xi’am, China): “SRY as a Transcriptional Regulator of ALDH2 Impacts Gender Differences in Alcoholic Liver Disease”
Owen H. Wangensteen Scientific Forum Excellence in Research Awards
Bariatric/Foregut
- Hiroshi Arakawa, MD (Kyoto, Japan): “Blood Mir-3619 Contributes to Liquid Biopsy and Nucleic Acid Medicine Targeting Pim1 in Esophageal Cancer”
Breast
- Fatemah Shojaeian, MD, MPH (Baltimore, MD): “Management of Patients with Recurrent or Refractory Idiopathic Granulomatous Mastitis: A Randomized Clinical Trial”
Colon and Rectal Surgery
- Rami James Aoun, MD (Columbus, OH): “Radiation Alters Multiomic Profiles in the Rectal Cancer Microenvironment”
- Alexander Troester, MD (Minneapolis, MN): “Influence of Dietary Shifts on Microbiome Composition and Anastomotic Healing in a Murine Colonic Anastomosis Model”
Endocrine
- Kendyl Carlisle, MD (Baltimore, MD): “Cost-Effective Analysis of Radiofrequency Ablation Compared to Lobectomy for Autonomously Functioning Thyroid Nodules”
General Surgery
- Elise Biesboer, MD (Milwaukee, WI): “Post-Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) Quetiapine Reduces Penumbral Leukocyte Mobilization, Preserves Blood Brain Barrier (BBB) Integrity, and Improves Neuroclinical Recovery”
- Muhammed Elhadi, MBBCh (Tripoli, Libya): “Opioid vs Opioid-Free Analgesia after Discharge from Surgery: A Propensity-Matched Analysis of an International Prospective Cohort Study (Quick-Shot)”
- Niklas Hase (Buxton, ME): “Critical Analysis of Conflicts of Interest in Studies Related to Robotics in Gastrointestinal Surgery (Quick-Shot)”
Health Services Research
- Annabelle Jones, MD (Boston, MA): “Fueling Recovery: Incidence and Risk Factors for Food Insecurity after Surgical Trauma”
- Cody Mullens, MD, MPH (Ann Arbor, MI): “Trends in Timely Access to High-Quality and Affordable Surgical Care in the United States”
Hepatobiliary and Pancreas
- Zachary Gao, MD (Houston, TX): “Chemotherapy-Induced Tumor Immune Remodeling in Pancreatic Cancer”
- Taisuke Imamura, MD, PhD (Kyoto, Japan): “Clinical Utility of Comprehensive Sequencing of Circulating Tumor DNA in Resectable Pancreatic Cancer”
Neurosurgery
- Matthew Culkin (Philadelphia, PA): “Dose Dependent Tranexamic Acid (TXA) Blunting of Penumbral Leukocyte Mobilization and Blood Brain Barrier (BBB) Permeability Following Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI): An In-Vivo Murine Study (Quick-Shot)”
Pediatric Surgery
- Steven Papastefan, MD (Chicago, IL): “Multiparameter Probe Monitoring of the Fetus Reveals Stark Limitations of Echocardiography in Predicting Physiologic Derangement During Fetal Surgery”
Plastic/Maxillofacial Surgery
- Jonah Donnenfield (Brookline, MA): “The Utility of the Schnur Sliding Scale in Adolescent Patients”
- Norah Liang, MD (Boston, MA): “Single-Cell RNA-Sequencing Identifies Modulator of Foreign Body Response with Use of Acellular Dermal Matrix in Breast Reconstruction”
Surgical Oncology
- Harrison Drebin (New York, NY): “Clinical Utility of Melanoma Sentinel Lymph Node Biopsy (SLNB) Nomograms”
- Jun Kiuchi, MD, PhD (Kyoto, Japan): “A Novel Mechanism of Tumor Progression via Decreased Concentration of Tumor Suppressor Micrornas in Blood of Gastrointestinal Cancer Patients with Sarcopenia”
- Annah Morgan (Stanford, CA): “IL-1RA and IL-12 Decrease Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma (PDAC) Tumor Mass and Prolong Survival by Inhibiting Mechanoresponsive Cafs”
Transplantation & Tissue Engineering
- Audrey Brown, MD (San Francisco, CA): “Hepatocellular Carcinoma Is Associated with T Cell Proliferation in Background Liver Parenchyma”
- Rachana Punukollu, MBBS (Phoenix, AZ): “Duration of Dialysis in Acute Kidney Injury Donors Does Not Adversely Impact Transplant Outcomes”
Trauma/Burn/Critical Care
- Priyanka Bele, MD (Philadelphia, PA): “Significant Institutional Cost Savings from a Tele-Trauma Surgery Consultation Service”
- Margaret Siu, MD (Springfield, MA): “Significant Institutional Cost Savings from a Tele-Trauma Surgery Consultation Service”
Vascular Surgery
- Sanuja Bose, MD (Baltimore, MD): “Women and Non-White Physicians Are Not Represented as Principal Investigators in Contemporary Vascular Device Trials”
