Fellowship Overview

Description
We are a high volume liver transplant center, performing approximately 200 adult liver transplants per year. We are the largest living donor liver transplant program in North America with 50-70 living liver donations per year. Our program follows >2000 recipients in clinic, and maintains a waiting list of 200-250 patients, meaning that approximately 10-15 new patients are assessed for transplant weekly. Our transplant program includes innovative therapies including living liver donation for fulminant liver failure and extensive liver cancer, donation after cardiac death, and liver transplantation with normothermic perfused grafts.
We have four funded transplant hepatology fellowship positions. The trainees come for one or two years, depending on the future career goals for the fellow. We recommend a one-year fellowship if the fellow will return to a center that provides care for transplant patient, but is not performing liver transplantations. If the fellow aims for a future position in an active transplant center a two-year fellowship is advisable. Our fellowship positions are fully funded and a salary is provided. The fellow is required to participate 3-4 times per months in the in-house call of the Multi-Organ transplant service. Our fellowship curriculum involves weekly rotations between the in house liver transplant service, the liver transplant outpatient clinics, and protected time for research. The fellowship also includes participation in elective and emergency endoscopy for liver transplant patients. We will arrange for rotations in transplant related fields such as radiology, pathology, and imaging according to the fellows wishes and needs.
Research
Clinical research is an important component of the fellowship. We provide an extensive database including more than 2000 liver transplantations with liver 20 years of follow-up. A database manager as well as a statistician is available to assist with research projects. Our patient population includes many unique features, such as a large living donor population, patients with extensive hepatocellular carcinomas, large data sets for uncommon indications for liver transplantation. Our expectations are that the fellow completes one project in his/her first year and three projects in the second year.
Curriculum & Didactic Teaching
We offer a wide variety of education and teaching rounds.
The following regularly scheduled rounds and conferences are held:
Date | Frequency | Name |
---|---|---|
Mon 8 – 9 am | weekly | Hepatology Clinicopathological Conference |
Mon 6 – 8 pm | monthly | HPB/Hepatology Faculty Club Series |
Tues 8 – 9 am | weekly | Live Liver Donor Imaging Review |
Tues 4 – 5 pm | weekly | Hepatoma Review Board |
Wed 8 – 9 am | weekly | Multi-Organ Transplant Rounds |
Thu 7 – 8 am | weekly | GI Transplant Teaching Seminars |
Thu 4 – 5 pm | monthly | GI Transplant Quality Assurance/Research Rounds |
Thu 6 – 9 pm | quarterly | Transplant Journal Club |
Fri 9 – 10 am | weekly | Liver Transplant Listing Conference |
Fri 10 – 11 am | weekly | Live Liver Donation Recipient and Donor Review |
Invited Professors
(2015) Pedro Baptista
Group Leader and Assistant Professor, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Zaragoza Area, Spain
“Tissue and Organ Engineering”
(2015) Dr. Scott Friedman
Chief, Division of Liver Diseases, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY
(2015) Dr. Christine M Cserti-Gazdewich
Transfusion Medicine Specialist & Consultant Hematologist
(2015) Dr. Jean-Michael Pawlotski
Professor of Medicine at the University of Paris-Est , France
(2016) Dr. Herbert Gaisano
Senior Scientist, Toronto General Hospital Research Institute, one of the world’s leading gastroenterologists, has been appointed to the Order of Ontario
(2016) Dr. Michael Ison
Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases) and Surgery (Organ Transplantation)
“Study of Infection in Transplant Patients”
(2016) Dr. Atul Butte
Director of the new Institute of Computational Health Sciences (ICHS) at the University of California, San Francisco, and a Professor of Pediatrics
(2016) Dr. John Fung
Professor of Surgery, Chief, Section of Transplantation, The University of Chicago
(2016) Dr. William Chapman
Chief, Division of Surgery Chief, Abdominal Transplantation Section
(2016) Dr. Peter Ghali
Associate Professor, Department of Medicine, Division of Gastroenterology, McGill University
(2016) Marina Berenguer
Consultant Hepatologist at La Fe University Hospital, Valencia, Spain
(2017) Prof. Qin Ning
Department of Infectious Diseases, and the Director of the Institute of Infectious Diseases in Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology
“Treatment Strategy for Chronic Hepatitis B”
Upcoming Speakers
(Apr 2017) Dr. Peter Zandstra
University Professor & Canada Research Chair, Stem Cell Bioengineering
Zandstra’s work integrates engineering and biological approaches and has contributed to the development of clinically and industrially relevant and academically recognized technologies based on the design of bioprocesses for the growth and differentiation of adult and embryonic stem cells. Direct applications of this work include tissue and cellular engineering, gene therapy, and organ transplantation.
(2017) Dr. Michael Wolf
Professor of Medicine and Learning Sciences, and Associate Division Chief – Research for General Internal Medicine & Geriatrics