Press Releases

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital's Vascular Surgery Fellowship Program Expanded to Include Columbia University Medical Center as a Clinical Training Site

New York, NY (August 10, 2004) — The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) recently approved an application to add a second clinical site to NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center's vascular surgery residency program. Vascular surgery residents will now undergo and complete training at both NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital (NYPH) locations: Weill Cornell Medical Center, situated in Manhattan's Upper East Side, and Columbia University Medical Center, located in the Washington Heights section of northern Manhattan. Residents will spend equal amounts of time at each site, working with the 11-member vascular surgery faculty to correct a number of vascular problems–such as aortic aneurysms, arterial occlusive disease (one of the leading causes of heart attack), and carotid stenosis (one of the leading causes of stroke)–with cutting-edge minimally invasive surgical procedures. In both places, they will have access to state-of-the-art endovascular procedure suites and investigational devices.

"This expansion is very exciting and adds amazing breadth and depth to NewYork-Presbyterian's vascular surgery residency program," said K. Craig Kent, M.D., program director and chief of vascular surgery at NYPH and professor of surgery at Columbia University and Weill Medical College of Cornell University. "By giving our residents the opportunity to work at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, we expose them to a new patient population–and to new faculty members with widely diverse areas of expertise and interest. We will therefore be able to offer some of the most robust surgical and endovascular experiences in the United States."

ACGME also approved several additional changes to the program, increasing the length of training from one to two years and the number of residents at each level from one to two. These modifications "will allow us to train greater numbers of qualified vascular surgeons, enabling us to better serve our patients and communities," said Dr. Kent. "With the field advancing in leaps and bounds–and new surgical tools and techniques increasingly at our disposal–vascular surgeons are able to do so much, and remain in ever-increasing demand."

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital–based in New York City–is the largest not-for-profit, non-sectarian hospital in the country, with 2,395 beds. It provides state-of-the-art inpatient, ambulatory, and preventive care in all areas of medicine at five major centers: NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, Children's Hospital of NewYork-Presbyterian, The Allen Pavilion, and the Westchester Division. One of the largest and most comprehensive health-care institutions in the world, the hospital is committed to excellence in patient care, research, education, and community service. The hospital has academic affiliations with two of the country's leading medical colleges: Joan and Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University and Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons.