News

In February 2017, NewYork-Presbyterian/Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital was verified as a Level 1 Pediatric Trauma Center by the American College of Surgeons. “This honor sets our program apart from others in the region,” says Steven Stylianos, MD, Director of the Trauma Center and chief of Pediatric Surgery.

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.

Jeffrey A. Ascherman, MD, site chief of the division of Plastic Surgery at NYP/Columbia, is now offering breast cancer patients a new device that allows them to do part of their breast reconstruction at home, and with faster results.

Sleeve Gastrectomy—a minimally invasive surgery to reduce the size of the stomach--is now the most popular weight loss surgery at our Center and in the world. Columbia surgeon Dr. Abraham Krikhely tells how it can help patients achieve their desired goals—improving both their health and quality of life.

When it comes to gut health, there’s so much information regarding what you should or should not be eating or supplementing with. There is also a lot of hype surrounding both probiotics and prebiotics. Let’s take a look at the facts.

NYP/Columbia is one of the leading centers in the world for patients with end-stage heart disease, and one of the first to allow those with end-stage heart failure to benefit from Heartmate 3. This new left ventricle assist device (LVAD) takes over the pumping action of the heart, moving oxygen-rich blood throughout the body.

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.

Cancer that spreads to the lining of the abdominal wall is typically lethal within six months. However many patients with this diagnosis are living longer with advanced treatments available at NYP/Columbia — one of the few programs in the nation to perform complex, extensive cytoreduction operations paired with hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC).

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

As a digestive disease dietitian, I have been getting a lot of questions surrounding the alkaline diet. Google alone provides over three million results on this topic! The problem is, almost everything you read and hear has zero scientific evidence. People think that an array of digestive diseases, including cancer and reflux, can be prevented or cured if the body is made more alkaline. So, it is time to set the record straight and separate fact from fiction.