2022 News Highlights

General surgery residents Jesse Codner, MD, Goeto Dantes, MD, and Chase King, MD, represented the Department of Surgery with excellence at the 2022 Annual Meeting of the Georgia Society of the American College of Surgeons (GSACS), held August 12-14 at King and Prince Beach & Golf Resort on St. Simons Island.

Dr. Codner, who has returned to fulltime clinical-curricular duties as a PGY-3, was recognized for his academic productivity from 2020-2022 as the inaugural Georgia Quality Improvement Program (GQIP) Research Fellow under the mentorship of Joe Sharma, MD, medical director of the GQIP and vice chair of quality, patient safety and care innovation for the Department of Surgery. "In addition to setting a high bar for others to follow, Jesse is also responsible for the continued funding of the fellowship for future resident scholars," says Dr. Sharma.

Dr. Dantes, a general surgery resident doing a pediatric critical care fellowship with mentor Allison Linden, MD, PhD, surgical director of ECMO at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston, won first place in the Resident Paper Competition held during the Day of Trauma, the Georgia Trauma Collaborative's day-long summer meeting that kicks off the GSACS event. 

Dr. Dantes' presentation was entitled "Utilization of angioembolization in pediatric blunt abdominal injury at adult vs pediatric trauma centers." Deepika Koganti, MD, associate program director of the Acute Care Surgery Fellowship, was his specific mentor for the project. Having won at the state level, Dr. Dantes will now advance to the ACS Region 4 Committee on Trauma competition.

Dr. King placed second in the General Surgery Resident Paper Competition. His abstract was entitled "Transapical mitral valve and left ventricular reshaping to repair functional mitral regurgitation in a dilated left ventricle." Senior author Muralidhar Padala, PhD, is Dr. King's research mentor and director of the Cardiothoracic Research Laboratory (CTRL) of the Carlyle Fraser Heart Center.