Our Team

 General Thoracic Surgery

Division of Thoracic Surgery has three general thoracic surgeons who specialize in minimally invasive thoracic surgical procedures.  We treat patients with surgical disease involving the chest wall, diaphragm, esophagus, lung, pleura, mediastinum, and airway.  We operate in the new state of the art Walter Tower OR.  There are two operating rooms that are dedicated to general thoracic surgery.  Most of our cases involve use of the Da Vinci Xi robot.  We have access to two robots every day with one of the rooms having a dual console that enhances the learning of the use of robots in thoracic surgical cases.  We have a well-established curriculum to teach robot-assisted surgery.  All the general surgery chiefs in the past three years have obtained the robot certification by rotating on our service.  There are general surgery residents who rotate on the service.  Typically, we have three general residents whose goal is to learn both cognitive and technical aspects of thoracic surgery.  To accomplish that mission, we have physician extenders in the inpatient and outpatient side of the service.  We have one physician assistant on the inpatient side and two nurse practitioners on the outpatient side along with two medical assistants and an executive administrative assistant.  We enhance the cognitive aspects of thoracic surgery with learning from patients seen in the clinic, rounds, weekly division conference, thoracic tumor board, suspicious lung nodule conference, general surgery M&M, general surgery grand rounds, Thoracic lecture series, and GI conference.   Lastly, we have added a video-based learning program that has enhanced the operative experience for general surgery residents.  Residents have the access to narrated operations performed by thoracic surgeons which highlight the major aspects of an operation.  Thus, a resident can be better prepared for the case and start to operate from the very first case.  The video also allows for a review of the cases performed by the residents to better understand how to improve for the next case.  We have an innovative state of the art training program for thoracic surgery fellows.

Congenital Heart Surgery (Dell Children's Medical Center)

The Texas Center for Pediatric and Congenital Heart Disease is led by Charles D. Fraser, Jr., MD, one of the country’s leading pediatric heart surgeons. The Texas Center for Pediatric and Congenital Heart Disease was created as a collaboration between Dell Children’s Medical Center and UT Health Austin, the clinical practice of Dell Medical School at The University of Texas. This exclusive partnership with Dell Medical School allows us to expand the care we provide to children in Central Texas, and support research for pediatric cardiovascular conditions.