As one of the leading nonprofit health systems in the United States of America, UPMC is positioned to provide fellows with a large surgical volume. These include transoral robotic surgery (TORS), endoscopic laryngeal surgery, endocrine, microvascular reconstruction and skull base surgery. UPMC’s Department of Otolaryngology excels at multidisciplinary, state-of-the-art management of head and neck cancer and actively includes fellows in that care team. Fellows have access to the state-of-the-art CREATES laboratory, where they can hone their surgical robotic skills. The CREATES lab brings together physicians from UPMC, as well as engineers and researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, to support the growing industry in advanced surgical devices and systems. The CREATES lab also houses the da Vinci Surgical System®. UPMC has more da Vinci surgical robots and dual-console systems than any other medical center in North America. Dual consoles allow a team of surgeons to operate simultaneously, and to foster a truly comprehensive and collaborative approach to surgical care. In this environment, fellows have the opportunity to gain career-enhancing patient care experience in a graduated-responsibility clinical setting. Unique clinical and translational research opportunities are available to fellows. These are funded by NIH research and training grants, including an NCI-funded SPORE and NIH T32.

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The University of Pittsburgh has become a high quality, high volume center for head and neck microvascular reconstruction with over 200 major reconstructive cases performed by our fellows on an annual basis. Our program seeks to optimize reconstructive care through high quality patient care, innovation, research, and application of technologic advances to improve outcomes. The group is actively engaged in several ongoing research projects to improve outcomes after head and neck reconstruction and explore new options for free tissue transfer. A particular area of reconstructive innovation has been in reconstruction of complex bone defects of the maxillofacial skeleton. Advances in computer assisted design allows the surgeons to essentially create a virtual simulation of the anticipated cancer surgery. This facilitates the generation of computer generated surgical guides, patient specific implants, and models that have been shown to both increase the anatomic accuracy of reconstructions as well as reduced surgical time. Additionally, these planning abilities have made primary dental implant placement during jaw reconstruction feasible for some patients. This shortens the time to oral rehabilitation and improves quality of life. An increasing interest in nerve reconstruction concurrent with these procedures has occurred, which optimizes the functionality and sensate nature of the reconstructed tissue.