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01/27/2026

Pioneering anesthesiologist and tireless advocate for maternal and infant health, Dr. Virginia Apgar is remembered for changing the course of newborn care forever with the Apgar score. But what about her interests outside the hospital?

Well, here’s a contact sheet of Dr. Apgar building a viola. She was a musician, luthier at home, and loved the outdoors, too.

Courtesy of Archives & Special Collections, Health Sciences Library

01/06/2026

Pancreatic cancer is notoriously hard to catch early. And this week, the looked at how AI tools are beginning to change that. In China, researchers are already using AI to flag subtle changes on routine CT scans, sometimes before symptoms appear.

So what could pancreatic care look like five years from now?

For Chief of GI & Endocrine Surgery Dr. John Chabot, the answer is both hopeful and clear: diagnosing more patients at stage 1, when treatment can truly change outcomes.

In our latest State of the Union interview, Dr. Chabot reflects on where progress is happening now, from personalized mRNA vaccine trials and emerging RAS inhibitors to the promise (and current limits) of AI in early detection, and what still needs to come next.

His message for patients and families hasn’t stayed the same. And that shift matters!

Read the full Q&A to explore how pancreatic care is evolving and why old statistics no longer tell the whole story. Link in bio.

01/05/2026

Ninety minutes, that’s the window surgeons had to bring Luna’s new heart to life.

In infant heart transplantation, performed only about 100 times a year nationwide, time is the most unforgiving variable. As soon as a donor organ is removed, its cells begin to die, which means surgeons must remove a failing heart, keep the baby alive on mechanical support, carefully size and sew vessels measured in millimeters, and restore circulation as swiftly as possible. There’s really no margin for error, only judgment, meticulous preparation, and an OR in sync.

Featured in the , Luna’s story demonstrates that reality through the work of Dr. Maureen McKiernan and the pediatric heart surgery team. It captures the minute-to-minute nuances of balancing speed with precision, innovation with restraint, and technical mastery with the weight and reverence of knowing that every transplant carries both loss and hope.

The best part? After months spent in the hospital, Luna was back home for her very first Christmas. This is one not to miss. Click the link in bio to read the full story.

Photos by Vincent Alban for The New York Times:

1. Dr. Maureen McKiernan, left, and Dr. Andrew Goldstone prepared to scrub in on a pediatric heart operation, three months after Luna’s surgery.

2. Dr. McKiernan, center, sewing Luna’s new heart to her body. She worked alongside Dr. Goldstone and Jennifer Sanchez, a scrub nurse.

3. Dr. Goldstone reached into Luna’s chest to remove her old, diseased heart.

4. The donor heart was shuttled inside a cooler that kept it between 39 and 46 degrees.

5. The donor heart sat in a plastic tub on a bed of damp, icy gauze as Dr. McKiernan and Dr. Goldstone closed a small hole and shaved away extra tissue.

6. Luna rested as her father, Gerson Maradiaga, caressed her. She had a feeding tube because she was still learning to eat.

12/17/2025

Welcome to the first installment of Routine Procedures ☕
️
Just like the rest of us, surgeons rely on small rituals to keep their days steady and their minds clear. In our new series, we take a closer look at the habits that shape how our surgeons show up, care for patients, and keep going day after day.

First up: Roshni Rao, MD, Chief of Breast Surgery

What time does your alarm go off in the morning?
➖5:30 a.m.

Snooze or no snooze?
➖No snooze, never snooze!

Breakfast of choice?
➖Just coffee. I hate to admit it, but yes, just coffee. With cream and sugar though, does that count for something?

First thing you do when you get to work:
➖Okay, I don’t know. Just turn on the computer? Yes, I guess it’s right to the computer.

Do you have any pre-op rituals or routines?
➖I get my glasses on. You have to put the glasses on first, and then the hat, and then you’ve got to put on the mask. You have to do it in that order. Otherwise, your glasses aren’t in the right spot where you can manipulate them.

Is there music in your OR?
➖Yes.

Who picks it and what’s on the playlist?
➖I pick it, usually a Pandora channel called “Happy Music,” or something like that.

Favorite shoes for long days standing in the OR:
➖Yes, for sure. I either wear Merrells, which are generally known for walking shoes, but they have a nice stiff one as well, or I wear Keens, which are work shoes, like the kind carpenters wear.

Read the full Q&A at link in bio!

12/15/2025

This month, the cardiac surgery team / completed their 300th robotic heart surgery, a milestone that places the program among the largest and fastest-growing in the country.

For Dr. Emile Bacha, Chief, Division of Cardiac, Thoracic, & Vascular Surgery, the moment reflects how far robotic heart surgery has come, and why it matters:

“When you insert the camera, you can see the heart from angles you simply can’t with open surgery. It’s almost like standing inside the chest. And by avoiding a sternotomy, you’re avoiding what patients often struggle with most after surgery—the bone incision. That is really a big advantage.”

Led by Dr. Arnar Geirsson, the program has achieved a 99% repair rate for mitral valve prolapse, with 99% of cases completed without conversion to open surgery. A feat only made possible by a deeply experienced, multidisciplinary team.

“I’ve said this before, but after I saw Dr. Geirsson’s first case and how excellent he was, I told him, ‘If I ever need a mitral valve repair, you are doing it, and you’re doing it robotically because wow; you can see inside the heart much better than you can with open heart surgery,’” adds Dr. Bacha.

Three hundred cases in, the focus remains the same: precision, recovery, and giving patients the best and most advanced options available.

Link in bio to read more.🫀

12/10/2025

Here’s a look inside the first living-donor domino split-liver transplant in adults.

This single day combined:
- A robotic living-donor surgery (a healthy donor donates part of their liver)
- A domino transplant (a chain of organ donations between multiple patients)
- A split-liver transplant (a procedure where a donor liver is split into two parts, with each part transplanted into a separate recipient)

It stretched across 15 hours, four rooms, and more than 30 team members. And in the end, three patients received the chance at renewed life.

Here’s a brief look at how it unfolded, step by step:

6:30 AM: Two operating rooms open in tandem.
In one, a robotic donor surgery begins through tiny incisions. In the other, a transplant team prepares to remove a recipient’s liver—one that will later be divided to help two more people.

8:00 AM: Ports are placed. The robot docks.
Across the hall, surgeons work around delicate vessels to free the first liver.

12:30 PM: The first hand-off.
The donor’s graft is released, rushed to the back table, flushed and trimmed, then carried to the next OR where a domino transplant is already underway.

1:30 PM: One liver becomes two.
The domino recipient’s liver—healthy in structure despite a biochemical condition—is removed and carefully split into right and left portions. Each graft is sized and shaped for its next patient.

2:00–3:00 PM: The “pink-up” hour.
In two separate rooms, new livers are connected vein-first. When blood flows in, the grafts shift from pale to rose, the quiet signal that life has returned.

By late afternoon, the hardest “plumbing” is done.
Bile ducts are connected, bleeding controlled, and abdominal walls closed. One by one, each room comes to its final stitch.

Walk through the full hour-by-hour story at the link in bio.

12/02/2025

Some stories unfold quietly, in the space between ordinary days. For David Higgins, retirement had just begun—morning walks, helping his 97-year-old mother, waiting for the birth of his first grandchild—when a small detail on the radio caught his ear. A PSA about cold-like symptoms. Something that didn’t feel urgent at the time, but stuck.

A week later, that memory sent him to the ER. And it saved his life.

What followed was a blur: a heart attack, a rare complication, an airlift to / , and an emergency operation with Dr. Michael Argenziano. David remembers almost none of it. Only waking up in the ICU, unsure what was real.

But recovery slowly brought its own moments of clarity: his daughter’s in-laws appearing at his bedside, his mother cared for by family, his community stepping in without hesitation. And finally, the day he stood outside the hospital lobby in borrowed scrubs, holding his newborn grandson, Alan, for the first time.

Today, David is returning to strength bit by bit. He visits Dr. Argenziano close to home in Goshen, NY and spends as much time as he can with his grandson.

“I look forward to taking care of other people again,” he says. “And I won’t forget everyone who helped us.”

Read David’s full story at the link in bio, and swipe to see a photo of David with his grandson at this year’s Thanksgiving!

11/20/2025

“This is my journey, and I will recover from that too,” Elizabeth told us.

On March 23, 2024, Elizabeth and her son played a concert together. A few hours later, she collapsed outside a pizza shop with a tearing pain in her chest. She survived an aortic dissection and underwent emergency open-heart surgery that night.

After ten surgeries in a decade, two of which were open-heart procedures last year, followed by months spent relearning how to use her right hand, she stepped back onstage with her son—a year to the day after that initial collapse.

“To be alive, playing. To have my family… that’s everything,” she said. This isn’t a comeback story. It’s a story about presence and the parts that hold us together.

Swipe to see a photo of Elizabeth and her son Chris the night they returned to the stage together. Don’t miss Elizabeth’s story at the link in bio.

11/17/2025

Plastic surgery has always been a discipline of invention. Long before microsurgery, pioneers like Dr. Jerome P. Webster relied on multi-stage flaps, clever geometry, and sheer surgical imagination to rebuild what seemed impossible. His sketchbooks are filled with cartoons, cross-excisions, pig’s-ear flaps, and meticulously illustrated cases.

In our recent Q&A, plastic surgeon Dr. Jarrod Bogue and archivist Katherine Satriano trace Webster’s legacy through these original drawings, instruments, and photographs that shaped the early evolution of the field.

Explore the story at the link in bio.

11/12/2025

Too many New Yorkers miss life-saving screenings because of barriers like distance and access. But the city’s first mobile lung cancer screening van is bringing prevention to the street level.

Inside the 40-foot van, you can receive a low-dose CT scan, same-day results, and connections to follow-up care.

In the words of Lung Screening Program Coordinator, NP Desiree Darrisaw, “Screening is the most effective when people don’t have symptoms. Our goal is simple, to catch disease early and make sure no one falls through the cracks.”

Learn more about NYC’s first mobile screening program and who may qualify for annual scans at the link in bio.

11/11/2025

Today, on Veterans Day, we honor those who have served and those who continue to serve long after military life ends.

This story comes to us from West Point Magazine: When Army vet Lisa Schenck was diagnosed with an aggressive bile duct cancer, her husband, retired Army aviator James Schenck, searched for a surgeon with not only the skill, but the determination to take on a complex, high-risk liver resection.

He found Dr. Jason Hawksworth, a fellow West Point graduate, combat-deployed Army surgeon, and now Chief of Hepatobiliary Surgery .

Three lives shaped by service. And Lisa is now back to her work and life, recovering with strength. And this Veterans Day, we honor not just those who served in uniform, but also the ways that service continues—in care, in resilience, in showing up for one another.

Link in bio to read the story.

Photos courtesy of West Point Magazine/Jason Hawksworth, MD.
1. Dr. Hawksworth served on active duty for 11 years, and earned the Combat Medical Badge in 2015.
2. Then-1LT James Schenck and then-CPT Lisa Thibault stationed at Camp Stanley in South Korea.
3. Dr. Hawksworth, Lisa and James Schenck at a follow-up visit.

10/29/2025

You might not know Bernard Maisner by name, but you’ve almost certainly seen his hand.

The world-renowned calligrapher’s lettering has graced weddings, art galleries, and movie screens alike. His penmanship even stood in for Johnny Depp’s in Pirates of the Caribbean and Daniel Day-Lewis’s in The Age of Innocence.

“I like to say that I’m an actor from my shoulder down,” jokes Maisner. “In Sleepy Hollow with Tim Burton, I got to play Johnny Depp’s hand, plus a nobleman and a farmer. Three different costumes, three different handwriting styles.”

Maisner has spent a lifetime shaping beauty and precision through ink and motion. But when his own rhythm faltered, and walking up stairs became a challenge, he needed a procedure to restore blood flow to his heart. That’s when his neighbor recommended cardiac surgeon Dr. Craig Smith.

“The surgery was a resounding success,” Maisner says. “All the tests showed that the heart muscle itself had no damage whatsoever. It was just bad plumbing.”

At their first meeting, Maisner gave Dr. Smith a note in his signature flourished script. “He really studied it,” Maisner says. “Taking the time, studying the calligraphy, giving it his full attention. I found that remarkable and beautiful.”

At the end of that year, Maisner mailed a thank-you note, on his own hand painted retail collection. To his surprise, Dr. Smith wrote back.

“If someone sends me a note, I write them back; I try to make sure I never miss someone,” Dr. Smith says. But with Maisner, the effort put in alone was impossible to miss. “The beautiful calligraphy, the envelopes, the cards… it really is a memorable experience to receive something like that.”

The two have exchanged letters ever since. They’ve bonded over books, artwork, and sharing updates about their work and families.

Two craftsmen, artists of different orders, bound by precision, gratitude, and the art of care itself. Read the full story at the link in our bio. And scroll through to see just a few of Maisner’s beautiful letters.

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