From left: Dr. Michel Gagner, Dr. William Stubenbord, Dr. Antonio Gotto and Dr. Alfons Pomp.
The Department of Surgery hosted a cocktail reception for the new "Weill Cornell Weight-Loss Surgery Program" on Nov. 25, in the Griffis Faculty Club. Dr. William Stubenbord, acting chairman of the Department of Surgery and professor of surgery, gave the opening remarks. Dr. Michel Gagner, professor of surgery (pending), and Dr. Alfons Pomp, associate professor of surgery (pending), gave an overview of the program.
The Weill Cornell Weight-Loss Surgery Program—spearheaded by Drs. Gagner and Pomp—began seeing patients at NewYork Weill Cornell Medical Center on Sept. 15. These doctors, boasting a team of experts in the field, including a multidisciplinary staff of physician assistants, nurses, nutritionists, psychiatric specialists, medical assistants and support staff, offer a minimally invasive surgical treatment for morbid obesity. The weight-loss program uses the criteria recommended by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as guidelines to determine who is a candidate for weight-loss surgery.
Dr. Gagner is internationally known as one of the top surgical weight-loss surgeons in the world. After receiving his M.D. from the University of Sherbrooke (Canada), Dr. Gagner completed his surgical residency at McGill University and then completed several surgical fellowships. He is an expert in gastroenterological surgery and hepato-biliary surgery. Academically, Dr. Gagner began his appointments as a demonstrator in anatomy at McGill University in 1984, and subsequently became assistant professor of surgery, faculty of medicine, Université de Montréal (Canada), from 1990 to 1995, and concurrently assistant professor, faculty of graduate studies, from 1994 to 1995. From 1997 to 1998, Dr. Gagner was associate clinical professor of surgery at Ohio State Medical School and then became the Franz W. Sichel Professor of Surgery, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, from 1999 to the present. Dr. Michel Gagner holds several medical licenses as well as memberships in more than 30 professional societies. He has been named several times as one of the top 100 minimally invasive surgeons in the country by New York Magazine.
Along with his academic appointments, Dr. Gagner is formerly chief of laparoscopic surgery and co-director of the Minimally Invasive Surgery Center at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Previous to his appointment at Mount Sinai, Dr. Gagner was the head of the section of laparoscopic surgery at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio and the director of education and development.
Dr. Pomp received his B.S. with honors from McGill University and then attended the University of Sherbrooke Medical School. He completed his surgical training at the University of Montreal and a two-year fellowship in surgical nutrition and metabolism at the Brown University School of Medicine (Rhode Island). In 1988, he joined the faculty of the University of Montreal and was also an adjunct professor of surgery at McGill University. During the early 1990s, he established a national reputation in advanced laparoscopic techniques and was a co-author on important contributions to the surgical literature on hernia repair, splenectomies, adrenalectomies and surgical robotics. He was eventually recruited to the Mount Sinai Medical Center, where he joined with Dr. Gagner and others to establish a world-renowned expertise in minimally invasive surgery and laparoscopic weight-loss surgery.
Dr. Pomp's primary clinical interest is the Weill Cornell Weight-Loss Surgery Program. In addition, both he and Dr. Gagner are co-investigators in a recently awarded multimillion dollar NIH/NIDDK research grant, for their involvement in one of only six clinical centers in the United States that is part of the Bariatric Surgery Clinical Research Consortium.
Photo by Amelia Panico.