Minimally Invasive Bariatric and Advanced GI Surgery Fellowship

Overview

The Minimally Invasive Bariatric and Advanced Gastrointestinal (GI) Surgery Fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital is a full-time clinical position for surgeons who have completed their general surgical training and are either board-eligible or board-certified in general surgery. The fellowship is fully accredited by the Fellowship Council and more information is available at the website. The fellow will report will primarily be stationed at Mass General, but will also spend one month at Brigham and Women's Hospital. Applications for the fellowship can only be made through the Fellowship Council's website.

Program Requirements

Candidates must have:

• Completed five years of general surgical training and be board-eligible
• Full Massachusetts medical license, federal and state DEA licensure
• Demonstrated excellent surgical skills, leadership and teaching abilities as well as the ability to make timely and effective decisions
• An accessible, calm, mature and fair personality with strong interpersonal skills that permit him/her to establish credibility with more junior trainees as well as senior staff of different disciplines
• A background in basic and/or clinical investigation and demonstration of scholarly attributes in teaching are desirable
• Professionalism and commitment to lifelong learning.

Goals of Training Program

• To achieve technical proficiency in the procedures and tasks necessary to perform advanced laparoscopic surgery. These procedures include, but are not limited to, laparoscopic hernia repair, laparoscopic anti-reflux surgery, laparoscopic colectomy, laparoscopic obesity surgery and laparoscopic solid organ removal
• To understand the pre-operative, intra-operative and post-operative management of patients with diseases that are treated by minimally invasive techniques
• To understand the equipment used in minimally invasive procedures
• To improve skills in flexible endoscopy and interventional radiology
• To gain familiarity with the surgical literature in depth as it pertains to minimally invasive surgery
• To contribute to the surgical literature in subjects related to minimally invasive surgery
• To enhance the minimally invasive surgery experience of the surgical residents

Plan to Accomplish Goals

In this program, the fellow is expected to:

• Participate in all laparoscopic procedures on both private and trauma/emergency surgery patients and to submit operative log to fellowship director on a monthly basis
• Actively participate in care of patients whom he/she has operated on, including reviewing patient’s record and diagnostic studies prior to surgery, completing daily rounds on the patient and preparing discharge summaries and prescriptions
• Attend follow-up visits of patients whom he/she has operated on and is expected to participate in the management of all complications that develop in his/her patients
• When not in the OR or outpatient setting, devote time to improving skills in flexible endoscopy and interventional radiology
• Submit a log of these procedures to the program director each month
• Conduct bi-weekly skills teaching sessions in the laparoscopic simulation laboratory
• Teach basic laparoscopic skills to all residents rotating on the general surgical services to ensure a basic proficiency level
• Assess the effectiveness of the mentoring process by observing the change in basic skills such as knot tying and suture placement over the course of each two-month resident rotation
• Be an active participant and educator during resident conferences and journal clubs, including providing reviews of the minimally invasive surgery literature
• Work with a faculty mentor to write at least one original article to contribute to the existing literature on minimally invasive surgery

Clinical Experience

The fellow will participate in all laparoscopic procedures performed on the private surgical service.

Research Experience

Each fellow is expected to participate in a clinical or basic research project and produce a minimum of one original article during the course of the one-year fellowship. The program director will help the fellow identify an appropriate faculty member to mentor the research project. The Mass General Division of Gastrointestinal and Oncologic Surgery has a clinical research nurse who is able to assist with this process.

Current Fellows

Konstantinos Economopoulos, MD, PhD, MENG

Dr. Konstantinos Economopoulos is a surgical fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital. His clinical interests include bariatric surgery, anti-reflux surgery, hernias, gallbladder disease, and benign gastrointestinal disease. He performs open, laparoscopic, robotic, and endoscopic surgery. His research interests are currently focusing on medical device design and innovation. Dr. Economopoulos is an experienced basic and translational researcher with demonstrated history of working in the non-profit organization research industry (Society of Junior Doctors) and academia (Harvard University and Duke University).

Dr. Economopoulos received his medical degree and PhD at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Medical School, and residency training in surgery at Duke University Hospital. He also completed two postdoctoral research fellowships (MGH and Duke) and obtained his Master's in Biomedical Engineering from Pratt School of Engineering with focus on medical device design. He has published >130 scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals and his work have been cited > 6,000 times. His research has been published in NEJM, JAMA Surgery, PNAS, Cancer, Stroke and cited by several media outlets. He holds three patents and was the CEO of a medical device startup for 3 years during his general surgery residency training. He is currently the Candidate Representative to the Board of Governors at the Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons (SAGES).