A Conversation With George K. Gittes, MD
George K. Gittes, MD, joined Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC as surgeon-in-chief and chief of the Division of Pediatric General and Thoracic Surgery in 2005. He also is a professor of Surgery in the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. He spoke with Pediatric INSIGHTS about the steps Children’s Hospital is taking to make pediatric surgical services more accessible and convenient for referring physicians and patients.
Pediatric INSIGHTS: Given ongoing construction and roadwork in Oakland, what is Children’s doing to make access easier for families whose children need surgery?
Dr. Gittes: We are expanding our outreach activities and distributing more services to outlying ambulatory surgery centers. Because we are operating absolutely at capacity in Oakland, we are actively trying to move as many cases as possible to Children’s North in Wexford and Children’s South in Bethel Park. Children’s East in Monroeville will begin offering same-day surgery in 2010. Each location offers plentiful, free parking.
A surprisingly large number of surgical procedures can be done on a same-day basis. This option is doubly convenient for families: Their child’s surgery can be done at the Children’s location closest to home, and the child can go home the same day.
We also are expanding our outreach to give families throughout the tri-state area more convenient access to Children’s surgical services. We recently began seeing patients in Erie and Johnstown. Soon we will be in Youngstown, Ohio, and Wheeling, W.Va. At these outreach locations, we see patients for initial consultations, some diagnostic tests and follow-up visits, and in Wheeling surgical procedures will be performed. When same-day surgery is needed, these patients and families—aside from those we see in Wheeling—can travel to Children’s North or Children’s South.
PI: In addition to expert pediatric surgeons, what else does Children’s offer that isn’t available at other hospitals in the region?
Dr. Gittes: All of Children’s anesthesiologists specialize in pediatrics. Anesthesia can be the scariest part of surgery for children, and it frequently presents more risks than the surgery itself. Children are not just “little adults”— they respond differently to anesthesia than adults do. We are the only hospital in the region offering surgery performed by specialist pediatric surgeons and anesthesia performed only by pediatric anesthesiologists.
Children’s also is one of the leading pediatric hospitals in the country offering minimally invasive surgery, which significantly reduces patients’ recovery time, pain and scarring. More than 95 percent of our appendectomies and pyloromyotomies, which are among the most common pediatric operations and the two most common emergency operations in children, are performed laparoscopically. Of all surgeries performed in the abdomen or chest—surgeries that conventionally require a large incision—we can now do about 70 percent minimally invasively. In many cases, our surgeons can even do cutting-edge, complex surgery like tumor excisions, minimally invasively.
PI: How will surgical services be affected when the new Children’s Hospital in Lawrenceville opens in 2009?
Dr. Gittes: The new hospital will have more beds (296 compared with 260 now), much more spacious clinics, larger waiting areas and more convenient parking for families. In addition to eight operating theaters, we will have six additional, state-of-the-art suites for minimally invasive surgery (four more than we have in Oakland), as well as four other general anesthesia procedure rooms. And when a child needs surgery that can’t be done on a same-day basis, parents will be able to spend the night comfortably in their child’s hospital room.
