The Hand and Upper Extremity Fellowship at the University of Chicago has two orthopaedic attendings and one plastic surgery attending. Dr. Daniel Mass is head of the Fellowship program and has been an Orthopaedic Surgeon for the past twenty three years with a busy hand and upper extremity practice. Dr. Roderick Birnie is an Orthopaedic Surgeon who has been practicing 10 years and performs all types of upper extremity surgeries. Dr. Rob Lohman is a Plastic Surgeon who has been here for about five years who does microvascular free flaps and also takes Hand Call.

Fellows on-call will interact with all attendings and primarily with Dr. Mass in the office practice. Currently, the service performs about 1,200 upper extremity cases per year with one-third of these cases representing shoulder and elbow procedures and two-thirds representing hand and wrist procedures. We have an excellent case mix of rheumatoid, wrist arthroscopy, fracture care and flaps. To increase our exposure to congenital problems and severe trauma, we spend two weeks a year in Lima, Peru. This experience gives us an opportunity to see very interesting cases and meet other hand surgeons.

The fellowship requires a research project, which is usually a basic science research project, that is performed in the Hand and Upper Extremity Laboratory. We do research on flexion tendon repairs and biomechanical injuries to the hand, wrist and elbow. You are given a lot of leeway in order to perform these procedures. The lab also allows you to practice microsurgery and do dissection on fresh frozen cadavers for your own knowledge.

Our hospital is not an adult trauma center so the level of night call-ins are relatively infrequent during the year averaging fewer than twenty nights. The philosophy of the program is to have excellent exposure to elective reconstructive cases and time to do a lot of reading and research.

For applications, please contact Betty-Anne Lakinger at blankinge@surgery.bsd.uchicago.edu or at 773-702-6306.