Christine Finck, MD, FACS

Peter Deckers Endowed Chair of Pediatric Surgery Surgeon-in-Chief Executive Vice President Connecticut Children’s Professor of Surgery and Pediatrics Associate Vice Chair of Surgery UConn School of Medicine

It is with great pleasure that we present the 11th annual report from the Department of Pediatric Surgical Subspecialties of Connecticut Children’s and the seventh combined report with the Department of Pediatrics. This report continues to highlight the solid alignment between Surgery and Pediatrics and the continued multidisciplinary growth of combined surgical and pediatric programs at Connecticut Children’s.

As we reflect on the challenges over the last year, I continue to be amazed and proud of our Connecticut Children’s team. Despite having to shut down elective surgery for almost three months, the Department of Surgery was able to perform 9,133 surgical procedures. The teams worked hard on the front lines during this pandemic to care for our emergent patients and then rapidly resumed elective surgeries when the time was right.

In 2020, we were pleased to earn national recognition for several of our medical and surgical divisions. U.S. News & World Report ranked Connecticut Children’s divisions of Diabetes & Endocrinology, Gastroenterology, Neonatology, and Urology as among the best in the country. In addition, Connecticut Children’s continues its Magnet® designation for Nursing, and the Bariatric Surgery Program, in collaboration with Hartford Hospital, continues as a center of excellence as determined by the American College of Surgeons and the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery. Connecticut Children’s is the only pediatric center in the state to hold this designation.

Over the last year, we saw growth in our pediatric plastic surgery volumes with help from our pediatric-trained plastic surgeon, Christopher Hughes, MD, MPH. Since arriving in 2019, Dr. Hughes has added expertise to a variety of multidisciplinary teams in areas including vascular anomalies and bariatric surgery. We continue to see growth in cardiac surgery and welcomed a second pediatric-trained cardiac surgeon, Raina Sinha, MD. Her arrival expands our ability to care for some of the most critically ill neonates. Lee Pace, MD, clinical director of surgical sports medicine, continues to lead the nation in arthroscopic trochleoplasty, a non-invasive procedure ideal for the treatment of trochlear dysplasia, a debilitating congenital condition that causes the kneecap to pop out unpredictably. He is joined by Allison Crepeau, MD, who provides expertise in injuries and conditions specific to female athletes. Additionally, we welcomed Mark Rieger, MD, and Anna Katsman, MD, both of whom provide pediatric orthopedic and sports medicine care in Fairfield County. This growth enables us to provide pediatric support at our partner clinics in southern Connecticut.

We hope to continue our growth trajectory in surgical services and have launched a hybrid operating room project on the main campus to build a state-of-the-art, minimally invasive suite for cardiac catheterization and other procedures. We continue to aggressively pursue our vision to bring the very best surgical care to the children of the region while simultaneously pursuing our two other core missions: research and education.

Some specific highlights from the past year: Innovation through research is integral to the mission of the department. We received philanthropic donations that allowed us to purchase cutting edge bioprinters. These printers are essential in our tissue engineering work, and during the pandemic, they did double duty, producing surgical face shields to keep our team safe. Moving ahead, our research and innovation efforts will continue to focus on children with solid tumors, premature lung disease, esophageal disease, congenital urethral defects, obesity, injury prevention, and sportsrelated injuries. Several federal grants and invention patents were submitted over the past two years focusing on diagnosis and treatment of these diseases and conditions.

Education of the next generation of pediatric surgery specialists is another core mission of the department. Annually, dozens of students and residents from the University of Connecticut, Quinnipiac University, and other institutions receive their required pediatric surgical training at Connecticut Children’s. Pediatric Otolaryngology, which earned full ACGME accreditation for a fellowship in 2019, has begun the process of recruitment, and Pediatric Neurosurgery will serve as the site for the newly implemented neurosurgical residency at the University of Connecticut.

As we continue to expand our services in Connecticut, and champion innovation and education, we remain focused on providing the highest quality, state-of-the-art care for children of the region. Our goal is to provide the best surgical experience as close to home as possible for our pediatric patients and their families.

Sincerely,

Christine Finck, MD, FACS