VCU names new chairman of cardiothoracic surgery and director of pediatric cardiovascular surgery

By Marcia Meredith

Virginia Commonwealth University’s Department of Surgery recently recruited two of the nation’s leading heart specialists to serve as the chairman of cardiothoracic surgery and director of pediatric cardiovascular surgery.

Robert Higgins, M.D., was appointed chairman of cardiothoracic surgery and associate professor of surgery. Recruited from Detroit’s Henry Ford Hospital where he was surgical director of thoracic organ transplantation and senior staff surgeon, Higgins is in the process of re-establishing VCU’s Medical College of Virginia Hospitals’ cardiac surgery and transplant program.

Higgins, who has performed more than 150 transplants in the past five years, says slow, steady growth is one of the keys to expansion. "At Henry Ford Hospital, we went from doing seven transplants to more than 30," said Higgins. "We eventually became recognized as the place to go for cardiac transplant surgery."

For pediatric congenital care, Lucian A. Durham, III, M.D., Ph.D., will serve as director of pediatric cardiovascular surgery and assistant professor of surgery. Durham, who held the same post at New York’s University of Rochester Medical Center prior to his move to Richmond, helped the facility’s pediatric heart center triple the volume of cases from 60 patients per year to more than 180 in the first year of operation. Durham is in the process of forming a children’s heart center at VCU’s MCV Hospitals.

"By some projections, almost 50 percent of Virginia’s children leave the state to receive congenital heart disease surgical care. This is a referral pattern we hope to impact and change," said Durham.

"Durham’s and Higgins’ vision will help us respond to the state’s need for a comprehensive cardiac program for both children and adults as we move into the next millennium," said Ronald C. Merrell, M.D., F.A.C.S., chairman of VCU’s Department of Surgery. "Our new program will allow us to focus on what we do best -- taking care of individuals with complex heart disease."

Higgins graduated magna cum laude in 1989 from Yale University School of Medicine where he attended on an academic scholarship. He served his residency, including one year as chief resident in general surgery, at the Hospitals of the University Health Center of Pittsburgh

from 1985 – 1990. Between 1990 and 1993, Higgins trained as a Winchester scholar and chief resident in cardiothoracic surgery at Yale. Following these appointments, he spent four months at Cambridge University in England and then was recruited to Henry Ford Hospital in 1993.

Durham, a Roanoke native, received his doctorate in biochemistry from VCU in 1984. He also was an instructor in VCU’s Department of Chemistry from 1980 - 1981.

After receiving his medical degree from VCU’s School of Medicine in 1988, Durham fulfilled his residency internship at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas from 1988 – 1991 and completed his residency at the University of Colorado’s Health Sciences in Denver in 1994.

For three years, Durham was a thoracic surgery resident and a John Alexander fellow in congenital cardiac surgery at Ann Arbor’s University of Michigan Medical Center. In 1997, he became director of pediatric cardiovascular surgery and the assistant professor of surgery and pediatrics at the University of Rochester.