Difficult Decisions in Bariatric Surgery

Dr. Alverdy is the Sarah and Harold Lincoln Thompson Professor of Surgery and Executive Vice-Chair of the department of surgery at the University of Chicago. Dr Alverdy is the director of the Center for Surgical Infection Research at the University of Chicago that studies the microbial pathogenesis of infections that develop following surgery including sepsis, wound infection, and anastomotic leak. He has been funded by the NIH for this work since 1999. He is the co-PI on a T32 training grant and has trained over 30 postdoctoral fellows in his laboratory over the last 25 years. Dr Alverdy is the co-associate director of the Digestive Disease Research Center Core (DDRCC- Eugene Chang MD Director) and a fellow of the Institute of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago. He is past president of the Surgical Infection Society North America.

Dr. Alverdy attended medical school at the Autonomous University of Guadalajara and Loyola University and received his surgical training at the Michael Reese Hospital/University of Chicago. He completed a surgical research fellowship at the University of California San Francisco. Dr Alverdy has an active gastrointestinal surgery practice involving minimally invasive surgery of the foregut including esophagus, stomach and pancreatobiliary tree.

Dr. Vigneswaran is an assistant professor of advanced gastrointestinal and bariatric surgery in the department of surgery at the University of Chicago. She received degrees in chemical engineering and molecular & cellular biology at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and received her medical degree from Rush University. She completed surgical training at the University of Chicago and surgical fellowship in minimally invasive gastrointestinal surgery at the Oregon Health & Sciences University. In addition, she received a masters in public health sciences at the University of Chicago with which she continues to study clinical outcomes in gastrointestinal surgery. Dr Vigneswaran maintains a busy clinical practice in bariatric and advanced gastrointestinal surgery, including complex esophageal and foregut diseases as well as revisional bariatric surgery. Her practice of minimally invasive surgery includes a robust robotic surgery practice and she continues to advance the field in minimally invasive surgery.