Pediatric Surgeons in New York

Care Philosophy: I relate well to children of all ages in a non-threatening way. I will explain your child's condition in terms you can understand, and I will make sure that you understand all of the treatment options, including non-surgical options. I will answer all of your questions, and will make myself available to you, if you should have more questions after you leave. You will leave my office feeling educated and empowered. I will offer your child the latest in minimally invasive techniques, with minimal pain and scarring, and faster recovery. I love my patients and treat them as if they were my own, and I take pride in my craft.

Care Philosophy: We are committed to delivering the best care and an exceptional patient experience. We are devoted to providing services that are patient-centered and compassionate, and care for you as a person.

Biography: Dr. Angela Kadenhe-Chiweshe completed her M.D. degree at the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine. She entered a categorical general surgery residency at the University of Rochester where her interest in pediatric surgery was solidified. In 2001 she joined the Pediatric Tumor Biology Laboratory as a postdoctoral research fellow under the tutelage of Drs. Jessica Kandel and Darrell Yamashiro. During this time she studied the effects of anti-angiogenic therapy in experimental models of pediatric solid tumors. This work led to key discoveries of how these tumors respond to anti-angiogenic therapy and served as important preclinical data for the Phase II studies for Avastin® (bevacizumab). She also concurrently completed a clinical fellowship in Extra-Corporal Membrane Oxygenation with Dr. Charles Stolar. She went on to complete her general surgery training at Columbia University in 2007, and followed with a clinical fellowship in Pediatric Surgery at the Morgan Stanley Children's' Hospital of New York Presbyterian, in 2009. Dr. Chiweshe joined the faculty of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, as Assistant Professor of Surgery in July 2009 until her departure in June 2018, when she briefly joined the Faculty of the Department of Surgery at Westchester Medical Center. Dr. Chiweshe's clinical interests include all aspects of general and thoracic pediatric surgery: in particular, neonatal anomalies, intestinal rehabilitation, hepatobiliary disease, pediatric cancer and vascular anomalies. Dr. Chiweshe's academic interests lie in the field of clinical and translational research. She served as co-PI of the Pediatric Tumor Biology Lab at Columbia, working alongside her mentor Dr. Yamashiro to elucidate the response of the tumor microenvironment of experimental models of pediatric solid tumors to NOTCH inhibition and high dose radiation. She has received grant funding from various sources, throughout her career, including NIH, Pediatric Cancer Foundation, and other institutional and philanthropic sources. Dr. Kadenhe-Chiweshe is a highly respected mentor and teacher, and has served as a role model to many students, residents, and fellows.Dr. Chiweshe is a Fellow of American College of Surgeons, a member of the American Pediatric Surgical Association, Children's Oncology Group, and the American Academy of Pediatrics. She has been recognized by Castle Connolly as one of "America's Top Doctors".

Biography: Dr. Peter Midulla, MD is a General Surgery Specialist who practices in New York, NY. He is 62 years old and has been practicing for 35 years. Dr. Peter Midulla, MD is affiliated with Mount Sinai Morningside and Mount Sinai Hospital.

Care Philosophy: My approach to patient care involves carefully listening to a patient's history and concerns. I encourage input from parents and devote time to educating families about the child's condition. With thoughtful consideration to the presenting symptoms, I proceed with focused testing as part of a guided workup. When surgery is indicated, I thoroughly review the risks, benefits, and alternatives to operative treatment. I then actively communicate the findings and plans with the primary pediatricians so all members of the provider team are up to date.

Biography: Jeffrey Greenfield, MD, PhD is a board-certified neurosurgeon who specializes in pediatric neurosurgery. In addition he sees certain adult patients with congenital neurosurgical conditions. Compassionate clinical care, research, and education are all central to his philosophy as a neurosurgeon and physician.His clinical expertise includes Chiari malformation, all forms of tethered spinal cord, pediatric brain tumors and congenital neurosugery into adulthood.As creator and director of the Chiari CARE program, Dr. Greenfield has developed an international reputation caring for children and adults with Chiari malformation, tethered cord, syringomyelia, and other associated conditions such as craniocervical instability, CSF leaks, and hydrocephalus as part of a large multidisciplinary team.Dr. Greenfield is a strong proponent of the unique concept of transitional or congenital neurosurgery caring for patients with specific conditions from childhood through adulthood.BLOG POST: Patients As PartnersDr. Greenfield writes about the importance of engaging and empowering even his youngest patientsDr. Greenfield also directs the pediatric skull base surgery program, evaluating and removing tumors of the pituitary gland region and skull base such as craniopharyngiomas with minimally invasive endoscopic tools. Dr. Greenfield is also an expert in utilizing minimally invasive ventricular endoscopy of the brain to treat tumors, hydrocephalus, and cysts within the ventricles, and intraoperative brain and spine mapping and imaging to care for children with benign and malignant tumors of the brain and spine.~~~Looking for a second opinion? Dr. Greenfield can review your scans:Click here to upload your images. (If you do not have an account simply enter your email address and you will be prompted to create an account.Instructions here.)~~~Dr. Greenfield sees patients at:1305 York Avenue (at 70th Street), 9th Floor New York, NY 10065~~~For more information about Dr. Greenfield, visit https://neurosurgery.weillcornell.orgTo make an appointment, please call 212-746-2363.Weill Cornell Pediatric Neurosurgery https://neurosurgery.weillcornell.org/pediatricChildren's Brain Tumor Projecthttps://childrensbraintumorproject.org

Biography: Dr. Brian Coakley, MD is a General Surgery Specialist who practices in New York, NY. He is 44 years old and has been practicing for 18 years. Dr. Brian Coakley, MD is affiliated with Mount Sinai Hospital, Mount Sinai Morningside, Mount Sinai Brooklyn and Mount Sinai Queens.

Care Philosophy: We are committed to delivering the best care and an exceptional patient experience. We are devoted to providing services that are patient-centered and compassionate, and care for you as a person.

Biography: Dr. Emond is the Vice Chairman of Surgery at Columbia University. He has over 30 years of experience performing liver transplantation and complex liver and biliary surgery in children and adults, including the first living donor liver transplantation (LDLT) in the United States. Dr. Emond has published extensively in this field and was the co-chair of the NIH A2ALL program for 13 years. In collaboration with the department of Medicine at Columbia, Dr. Emond recruited the leadership of the Columbia Center for Translational immunology that created the foundation for translational and clinical research in transplantation tolerance. This will lead the way to inducing transplant tolerance in liver patients with the mixed chimerism strategy. As Director of Transplantation at the Columbia University Medical Center Dr. Emond's activities foster clinical excellence and research across all 11 of the solid organ transplant programs at the Medical Center. In recognition of his national and international leadership in transplantation, Dr. Emond is the past president of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons, the pre-eminent association of a transplant surgery. Contribution to Science Living donor liver transplantation Dr. Emond has spent a substantial portion of his career developing living donor liver transplantation and studying the safety of the procedure in both the donor and recipient. He participated in the first living donor liver transplant in the United States and focused on refining the techniques of performing living donor liver transplants and split liver transplants. He was the national co-chair of the NIH-sponsored Adult-to-Adult Living Donor Liver Transplantation (A2ALL) consortium from 2002 to 2015 to study the safety and outcomes of living donor liver transplants. Hepatic resection/ischemia Dr. Emond developed techniques for surgical resection of liver tumors and studied the effect of ischemia during resection on postoperative liver function. These studies include the outcomes of the extent of hepatectomy, the biochemical response to major hepatectomy and ischemia-reperfusion injury of the liver in rodent models. He has studied the clinical safety of inducing total vascular exclusion to provide a bloodless field during the liver transection. This has applications in both liver cancer and living donor hepatectomies. Hepatocellular carcinoma treatment Dr. Emond has studied many aspects of managing patients with hepatocellular carcinoma. These studies have included characterizing the risk factors for recurrence of disease following transplantation due to comorbidities and tumor characteristics. The research team has also studied the optimal method of preventing tumor growth in patients with HCC on the liver transplant wait list in addition to optimal strategies of liver allocation to optimize outcomes following liver transplantation. These studies have contributed to proposed changes in UNOS exception point allocation for liver transplant candidates with HCC. Pediatric liver transplantation Dr. Emond helped develop the field of pediatric liver transplantation. Contributions to this field include: the use of living donors for pediatric patients; use of auxiliary liver transplants for metabolic diseases; use of partial liver grafts for pediatric patients; and technical modifications that improved outcomes for this patient population. Visit The Center for Liver Disease and Transplantation at columbiasurgery.org/liver

Biography: Dr. Zitsman graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a degree in natural sciences, and received his M.D. degree from Tufts University Medical School in 1976. He received his training in General Surgery at Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston, and completed his Pediatric Surgery training at the Babies & Children's Hospital of New York. He is Board-Certified in General Surgery and Pediatric Surgery, and also holds a Certificate of Special Competence in Surgical Critical Care. Dr. Zitsman has maintained an active clinical practice in pediatric surgery in the New York area since 1985. He holds the rank of Professor of Surgery at the Columbia University Medical Center. His areas of interest include applications of minimally invasive techniques in pediatric surgery, chest wall deformities, and weight loss surgery in adolescents. Dr. Zitsman has been named to Castle Connolly's Best Doctors in the New York area list annually since 2002. Dr. Zitsman is founder and Director of the Center for Adolescent Bariatric Surgery at the Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital of New York-Presbyterian. He is Principal Investigator for an FDA-approved adolescent laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding study. He has performed over 500 minimal access weight loss procedures and served as Chairman of the Committee on Obesity of the American Pediatric Surgical Association as well as Chairman of the Childhood Obesity Committee of the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery. Dr Zitsman has served as a Consultant to the Medical Devices Evaluation Panel of the FDA.

Care Philosophy: We are committed to delivering the best care and an exceptional patient experience. We are devoted to providing services that are patient-centered and compassionate, and care for you as a person.

Biography: If you need assistance in Chinese (Mandarin & Cantonese), please call 646-317-6325. Visit Columbia Liver Asian Outreach Office (English | Mandarin) Tomoaki Kato, M.D., is a noted pioneer in multiple-organ transplantation, pediatric and adult liver transplantation. Dr. Kato is Surgical Director of Adult and Pediatric Liver and Intestinal Transplantation at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Irving Medical Center and is a professor of surgery at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. Dr. Kato is known for unique and innovative surgeries for adults and children, including a six-organ transplant; a procedure called APOLT (auxiliary partial orthotopic liver transplantation) that resuscitates a failing liver by attaching a partial donor liver, making immunosuppressant drugs unnecessary and the first successful human partial bladder transplantation involving the transplant of two kidneys together with ureters connected to a patch of the donor bladder. In a highly publicized case, he led the first reported removal and re-implantation, or auto-transplantation, of six organs to excise a hard-to-reach abdominal tumor. Previously the director of pediatric liver and gastrointestinal transplant and professor of clinical surgery at the University of Miami School of Medicine, Dr. Kato received his medical degree from the Osaka University Medical School in Japan and received his residency training in surgery at Osaka University Hospital and Itami City Hospital in Hyogo, Japan. He completed a clinical fellowship in transplantation at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Hospital, in Miami, Florida, where he was subsequently appointed to the surgical faculty in 1997, and promoted to full professor in 2007. He served as a surgeon and senior leader of the liver and transplantation center at Miami's Jackson Memorial Hospital, beginning in 1997, and at University of Miami Hospital (previously Cedars Medical Center), beginning in 2004. Dr. Kato is a member of numerous professional and honorary organizations, and the author or co-author of more than 180 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals. Visit The Center for Liver Disease and Transplantation at columbiasurgery.org/liver

Biography: Jennifer DeFazio, MD, is a board-certified pediatric surgeon. She treats a broad range of pediatric conditions and is especially interested in the surgical management of neonatal and congenital diseases, complex anorectal disorders, metabolic disease and Median Arcuate Ligament Syndrome (MALS). She is also part of the Bowel Management Program.

Biography: Dr. William Middlesworth joined the medical staff of Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital of NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia (MSCHONY), Division of Pediatric Surgery in 1997. He currently serves as director of the Pediatric ECMO Program, and Residency Program Director of the Pediatric Surgical Fellowship. Dr. Middlesworth has founded and leads the Pediatric Thyroid Center and the REACH (Researching Esophageal Atresia for Children's Health) Clinic. A graduate of Dartmouth College, Dr. Middlesworth spent two years in the Genetics Department at the Boston Children's Hospital on work leading to the identification and characterization of the dystrophin gene, important in the pathophysiology of muscular dystrophy. He went on to medical school at Rutgers University, and completed his general surgery training at the University of Maryland Medical System. During residency he spent a year as a surgical research fellow at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne, Australia. His pediatric surgery fellowship was completed at MSCHONY. In addition to the responsibilities listed above, Dr. Middlesworth serves on numerous hospital and university committees focused on Quality and Patient Safety, and is the Quality Chair for Columbia Department of Surgery. He is the Surgeon Champion at the Columbia campus for the National Surgical Quality Improvement Project (NSQIP) of the American College of Surgeons. He chairs a multi-institution collaborative to reduce harm and enhance safety in the peri-operative setting that is sponsored by MCIC Vermont, the member-owned malpractice insurance carrier for Columbia, Cornell, New York Presbyterian Hospital, Johns Hopkins Medicine, University of Rochester Medicine and Yale. Dr. Middlesworth is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons, and the American Academy of Pediatrics. He is a member of numerous professional organizations dedicated to advancing the surgical care of infants and children, including the American Pediatric Surgical Association (APSA), the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma(EAST) and the Extra-corporeal Life Support Organization(ELSO), among others. Dr. Middlesworth has been selected as a Best Doctor in New York Magazine, and a Castle Connolly Top Doctor. He has received recognition for excellence in teaching, and authored numerous papers in important journals including the Journal of Pediatric Surgery, the Journal of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology and Pediatric Critical Care Medicine.

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