News

The Department of Surgery at Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC) is very pleased to announce a gift to create the Newmyer Family Fellowship for Innovation in Surgery, with gratitude to donor Arthur G. (“Terry”) Newmyer III.

The Center for Liver Disease and Transplantation at NYP/Columbia is making noteworthy progress in the treatment of hepatocellular cancer (HCC) and cholangiocarcinoma (CCA), cancer of the bile duct, and is the national leader in this field.

The Center for Liver Disease and Transplantation at NYP/Columbia has created a new program to help pediatric liver transplant patients transition to adult care.

The Center for Liver Disease and Transplantation (CLDT) in collaboration with pediatric surgery at NYP/Columbia is making noteworthy advances in the care of children with serious liver conditions, and is a national leader in this field. “Our superior outcomes are the result of unique surgical training, high patient volume, and unsurpassed multidisciplinary collaboration,” says Jean C. Emond, MD, Chief of Transplantation Services at Columbia. “The CLDT brings together leading experts hepatobiliary surgery, hepatology, gastroenterology, oncology, radiology, diagnostic testing and pathology to provide exceptional patient care.”

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is now the most common cause of chronic liver disease in the United States, affecting 25% of the population. Without intervention, it can lead to significant liver damage in a smaller group of those patients.

Treat and be Proactive.

Trillions of bacteria, fungi, and viruses live inside the human body. Some aid in digestion while others promote a healthy immune system. When these microbes get out of balance, this can set the stage for disease.

New antiviral therapies for Hep C are eliminating complications and producing better than 90 percent cure rates, says Lorna Dove, MD, MPH, a hepatologist at Columbia’s Center for Liver Disease and Transplantation. In the past clinicians used to “watch and wait” carefully monitoring the patients to see if they would fall into the 25% who develop fibrosis, and the smaller percentage who progress to liver cancer. “In the past, drugs for this virus were hard to take and we weren’t sure how well they would work in different populations. As a result, many individuals felt they were living with time bomb and in the meantime, worried that they might transmit Hep C to their loved ones.

The Adult Small Bowel Program at NYP/Columbia University is making advances in managing patients with intestinal and multivisceral transplants.

NYP/Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital has one of the most advanced pediatric intestinal transplantation and rehabilitation programs in the country. “We have developed new protocols using induction therapy and in last four years, have achieved 100 percent one-year patient survival,” reports Mercedes Martinez, MD, Director of the Intestinal Transplant Program at the Center for Liver Disease. “We also are developing new research studying mechanisms of rejection in these patients. We also have one of the most comprehensive programs in the nation for pediatric liver transplantation with better than expected outcomes for patients and graft survival, at one month, three years and five years.”