Overview of Training for Individual Specialties
PEDIATRIC SURGERY
The Pediatric Surgical Team consists of staff surgeons, one fourth-year resident, one junior resident, one nurse clinician, and medical students. Each year this team performs approximately 650 operations including life-saving and reconstructive operations for neonates, infants, and children with congenital surgical diseases and trauma, surgical procedures for malignant tumors, thoracoscopic and laparoscopic procedures. The Pediatric Surgery Service covers a wide area including the surgery of the esophagus, lung, mediastinum, chest cage, gastrointestinal tract, liver, pancreas, spleen, diaphragm, and abdominal wall.
On daily teaching rounds and didactic conferences each week, residents are encouraged to discuss problems common to both surgery and pediatrics. At elective and emergency operations, surgical residents perform their duties as a surgeon under the supervision of a staff surgeon.
The Pediatric Surgical Team sees more than 1,500 children annually in the outpatient clinic for preoperative diagnostic evaluations and postoperative follow-up care. After treatment, patients return at appropriate intervals for follow-up evaluation, thus providing insight in regard to the long-term results of surgical treatment of major congenital anomalies.
The Pediatric surgeons are trained and equipped to diagnose and manage almost every surgical problem of the fetus and newborn baby, as well as the infant and child.
Patients range in age from premature infants through late adolescence and, for some children with complicated problems, into young adulthood. Fifty percent of the pediatric patients are less than one year old. This is when our pediatric surgical service is most unique and needed. Operations are performed on an outpatient basis whenever possible.
We recognize the special needs of young patients and their families. In addition to offering a welcoming, comfortable environment for youngsters and parents, we provide special expertise in areas ranging from the corrections of life-threatening birth defects in the newborn to various surgical diseases of infancy and childhood.
A pediatric intensive care unit is available for critically ill infants and children, and rapid transport via helicopter makes hospital services more widely accessible for emergencies. And, at the same time, our location within an outstanding multi specialty hospital equips us to provide a diverse array of resources to our young patients.
The care and planning involved with your child's surgery are provided by a skilled team of health care professionals. Each year the pediatric surgical team performs about 600 operations. Further, more than 1,000 children are seen annually in the outpatient clinic for preoperative diagnostic evaluations and postoperative follow-up care. After treatment, patients return at appropriate intervals for follow-up evaluation, thus providing insight in regards to the long-term results of surgical treatment. In addition, the team sees about 600 patients a year in consultation, generally referred to us by the Medical Pediatric Service, for whom no operation is recommended.
Pediatric Surgery Staff
- Joel Shilyansky, MD – Director, joel-shilyansky@uiowa.edu