News & Events

Quoc-Hung "Key" Nguyen, MD, a UCSF general surgery resident and a research fellow in the basic science laboratory of Tippi MacKenzie, M.D., received two prestigious awards at the 14th Annual Academic Surgical Congress held in Houston, Texas on February 5-7, 2019. His participation was underwritten by the Department of Surgery Resident Travel Fund, recently established by the Department to promote excellence in resident research and participation in major surgical conferences. Dr. Nguyen's abstract, "In Utero Enzyme Replacement Therapy in Sly Syndrome Penetrates Blood-Brain Barrier and [...]

Benjamin Padilla M.D., a UCSF pediatric and fetal surgeon, and assistant professor in the Division of Pediatric Surgery, has been honored with the Exceptional Physician Award by UCSF Health. He was one of only eight recipients out of more than 100 nominations from a pool of several thousand UCSF physicians. The awards were announced by Josh Adler, MD, Executive Vice President, Physician Services, UCSF Health in an email to the entire UCSF community: These eight physicians were nominated and selected based on their demonstration of our core values of PRIDE -- Professionalism, Respect, [...]

The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Children Health & Human Development (NICHD) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded pediatric surgeons Benjamin Padilla, MD, and Michael Harrison, MD, a two-year grant to study the use of cryoanalgesia as a novel method of pain control in the Nuss Procedure. The research team includes Sunghoon Kim, MD, and Jill Imamura-Ching, RN. Claire Graves, MD, played a key role in setting up the project and developing the grant application while she was a resident in the Innovation Pathway from 2015 to 2017. The Nuss Procedure is a [...]

UCSF News reports on the work of a UCSF research team investigating the causes and potential treatments for gastroschisis, a rare disorder in which developing intestines protrude outside of the body through a hole alongside the belly button. Led by pediatric surgeon Tippi MacKenzie, MD, Associate Professor of Surgery in the UCSF Division of Pediatric Surgery and co-Director of the UCSF Center for Maternal-Fetal Precision Medicine, the team published findings elucidating the role of the immune system in the development of this potentially life-threatening disorder. UC San Francisco [...]

KQED Science for Personalized Medicine reports on a multitude of new sensor technologies that are being used to monitor medical issues, which would otherwise be time-consuming for hospital staff to manage. Hanmin Lee, M.D., Professor and Chief of the Division of Pediatric Surgery at UCSF as well as Medical Director of Surgical Innovations was interviewed for the article, offering his insights about the huge potential of the nascent field. "I firmly believe that the next 50 years are going to be the stunning revolution of health," says Hanmin Lee, professor of surgery and director of the [...]

UCSF News reports on the discovery by researchers at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital San Francisco that fetuses with enlarged ventricles, the fluid-filled cavities inside the brain, may be less likely than other fetuses to benefit from surgery in the womb to treat spina bifida. These findings were based on data from the 2011 Management of Myelomeningocele (MOMS) study, which demonstrated the potential benefit of treating spina bifida, a birth defect, in utero. The researchers found that fetuses with enlarged ventricles were more likely to require a second surgery to relieve a [...]

UC Berkeley News reports on the "smart bandage," a device in development by a team of surgeons and scientists at UCSF and UC Berkeley that uses electrical currents to detect early tissue damage from pressure ulcers, or bedsores, well before they are visible to the human eye. The technology offers the possibility of early intervention to prevent progression of the wound. David M. Young, MD, Professor in the Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, is leading the clinical development of the technology.  Engineers at UC Berkeley are developing a new type of bandage that does far more [...]

UCSF News report on how the immune system drives pregnancy complications after fetal surgery in mice. As a fetal surgeon at UC San Francisco, Tippi MacKenzie, MD, has long known that conducting surgery on a fetus to correct a problems such as spina bifida often results in preterm labor and premature birth. Now, MacKenzie and her UCSF colleagues have shown that, in mice at least, pregnancy complications after fetal surgery are triggered by activation of the mother's T cells – the same T cells that cause the body to reject a donor organ after transplant surgery "Here at UCSF, the [...]

"Innovation in medicine is driven by need, but also by the market," said Dr. Michael R. Harrison, the director emeritus of the Fetal Treatment Center and the director of the Pediatric Device Consortium, both at the University of California, San Francisco. "Big markets have lots of folks developing devices, but small markets like the pediatrics market don't."

UCSF News reports that on a study that suggests maternal liver grafts more tolerable for children with biliary atresia, a rare, life-threatening disease, results that may have important implications for counseling parents on organ donation Children with a rare, life-threatening disease that is the most common cause of neonatal liver failure – biliary atresia – better tolerate liver transplants from their mothers than from their fathers, according to a UCSF-led study. In the study, researchers reviewed all pediatric liver transplants nationwide from 1996 to 2010, and compared the outcomes [...]

Surgeons at the UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital in San Francisco are using magnets to reshape the breastbones of children who suffer from Sunken Chest Syndrome. The technique is undergoing phase 3 clinical trials, but the doctors hope to prove that long term magnetic force is as effective and less painful than conventional surgery.

The Society of Clinical Trials has named UCSF's Management of Myelomeningocele Study (MOMS), a review of prenatal versus postnatal surgery for myelomengingocele (spina bifida), as its Trial of the Year. The study earned recognition as an important clinical trial that overcame difficulties and produced remarkable results.

The UCSF "D'Vice Squad," a group of innovators from across the Bay Area, has drawn from diverse disciplines over the last two years to develop medical devices for children. Now the squad's hard work has been rewarded with a $1 million grant from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to expand its work over the next two years.

Doctors call Vilma Zarate's role as an administrative analyst in University of California, San Francisco's fetal surgery department invaluable to both faculty and patients. For faculty, Zarate carefully crafts grant and funding applications and coordinates clinical trials. Patients, on the other hand, benefit from the clear and thoughtful consent documents Zarate creates to help them understand the risks of cutting-edge medicine.

For years, surgeons have been seeking ways of operating on babies in the womb, reasoning that medical abnormalities are easier to address while the fetus is still developing. Now, for the first time, a large clinical trial has shown that fetal surgery can also benefit infants with non life-threatening conditions. The eight-year study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that babies born with myelomeningocele, the most common form of spina bifida, a debilitating spinal abnormality, were twice as likely to walk and experienced fewer neurological problems with in [...]

UCSF News reports on fetal stem cell transplantation, taking healthy cells from the bone marrow of a donor, and transplanting them into the fetus through ultrasound-guided injections with the goal of having the implanted cells, or graft, replenish the patient's supply of healthy blood-forming cells. UCSF researchers have tackled a decade-long scientific conundrum, and their discovery is expected to lead to significant advances in using stem cells to treat genetic diseases before birth. Through a series of mouse model experiments, the research team determined that a mother's immune response [...]

UCSF announces the formation of the Institute for Fetal and Neonatal Health symposium brings together clinicians and basic scientists involved in different aspects of development and fetal intervention.

Stopping curvature of the spine in kids usually requires a series of painful operations to implant rods and screws to adjust the spine. Even then, the results are often less than perfect. However, a medical team at UCSF has developed a technique using magnets that promises to do away with so many surgeries.

Magnets have a brand new use. They are being tested in a new procedure to correct a rare birth defect , Pectus Excavatum, in a Los Gatos boy. Dr. Kim Mulvihill reports.

Michael Harrison M.D., a renowned pioneer in fetal and pediatric surgery, Professor Emeritus of Surgery and Pediatrics, and Director Emeritus of the Fetal Treatment Center at UCSF, has been elected to the prestigious Institute of Medicine (IOM), one of the U.S. National Academies. Membership in the IOM reflects "the height of professional achievement and commitment to service" and is reserved for those at the pinnacle of their field.