'Patients fly all over the world for him': Dell Medical School appoints leader for new heart surgery program

The University of Texas Dell Medical School has brought in its first division chief of cardiovascular and thoracic surgery, Dr. George Arnaoutakis.

With his appointment comes the start of a new division at the medical school, which offers new possibilities for clinical research trials; cardiac device trials and development; residency training in cardiovascular and thoracic surgery; and eventually fellowships in the specialty.

Arnaoutakis, 41, comes to Dell Medical School from the University of Florida College of Medicine in Gainesville. His appointment happened after a search of more than three years for the right candidate to start the division at the medical school, as well as a comprehensive aortic center at Ascension Seton hospitals, where Arnaoutakis will practice.

"There is nobody in this part of the world that does what he does," Dr. Charles Fraser Jr. said of Arnaoutakis. Fraser leads the Institute for Cardiovascular Health at Ascension Seton and Dell Medical School as well as the Texas Center for Pediatric and Congenital Heart Disease at Dell Children's Medical Center. "Patients fly all over the world for him," he said of Arnaoutakis.

Coming to Dell Medical School was enticing, Arnaoutakis said, because it's an opportunity to build a program from the start. Other medical schools have established cardiovascular and thoracic surgery departments, but with Dell Medical School being only 7 years old, it had yet to establish one.

"There are outstanding clinicians that are currently here," Arnaoutakis said. "What I and other faculty will bring is national visibility."

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The arrival of Arnaoutakis is "a wonderful opportunity to see the development and growth not just in the hospital, but for our entire region," said Dr. Peter Monteleone, an interventional cardiologist and vascular medicine doctor who heads the cardiovascular research for Ascension hospitals nationwide and teaches at Dell Medical School.

Patients will see the growth in the types of procedures that will become available to them for which they previously had to travel elsewhere.

Monteleone said the goal of the school and Ascension Seton has been to reach a level of care similar to a Cleveland Clinic or a Massachusetts General Hospital. "This is a big step in helping us get there," he said.

Arnaoutakis sees himself as helping to build a regional system of integrated care from fetal care to end-of-life care. "Grit is how you get there," he told his colleagues on Thursday. "It's exciting. It's what invigorates us. This represents the magnitude of opportunity."

First, he said, you have to build the faculty. Arnaoutakis already has recruited two other surgeons to the program: Dr. Joshua Grimm from the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Karen Kim from the University of Michigan. "The vision of welcoming Josh and Karen is of what can be done here," he said. "We will be doing catch-up as we develop the surgical side."

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Then he'll be building the team, which includes everyone from the operating room team to geneticists and researchers.

"We're starting the wheels in motion," he said, when it comes to research trials, which he said will be made easier to happen in Austin because he's already been involved in them and has developed the relationships with device manufacturers and collaborators.

He is hoping to bring many of the clinical and device trials that he was doing at the University of Florida to Dell Medical School, which would create opportunities to do first-ever-in-Austin surgeries.

Arnaoutakis sees an opportunity to partner with UT's biomechanical engineering department to develop cardiac devices and test them here. He also sees possibilities in using artificial intelligence to better plan out surgeries and improve outcomes.

Genetics and an integrated center, he said, "is where we can truly make an impact."

Bringing the role of genetics to the cardiovascular and thoracic surgery world can help determine who would best benefit from preventative surgeries to strengthen aortas before an aortic dissection occurs, for example, he said, or create a long-term plan for a patient beginning in childhood or even before birth.

What really motivates him, though, is the opportunity to teach the next generation of cardiovascular and thoracic surgeons. That means developing a residency program in this specialty, which doesn't exist at Dell Medical School currently, and a fellowship program, also currently nonexistent.

"It's exciting and important, and in my opinion, it's overdue," he said.

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This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Dell Medical School begins new heart surgery program with top leader