Section of General Surgery
Director: Eric A. Wiebke, M.D., MBA
J. Stanley Battersby Professor

Clinical: 35 General Surgery faculty members maintain clinical practices at 6 local hospitals. The downtown hospitals include the Indiana University, Wishard Memorial, Roudebush VA, and Methodist Hospitals. IU, Wishard, and the VA facilties are, with Riley Childrens' Hospital, all within walking distance of each other on the main IU Medical Center campus. Methodist is a short monorail ride away.

  Indiana University Hospital: 

• 10,000 total cases annually
• IU-Simon Cancer Center
• Tertiary Care including HPB, cancer, critical care, advanced laparoscopic, breast, endocrine, and colorectal surgery

  Wishard Memorial Hospital:

• 10,000 total cases annually
• Level 1 Trauma Center
• City County Public Hospital
• General surgical and bariatric services for Indianapolis-Marion County underserved populations

  Roudebush VAMC:

• 8,000 total cases annually
• Busy endoscopy suite
• All general surgical and endoscopic services for the Indiana and Illinois Veterans population

  Methodist Hospital:

• 18,000 total cases annually
• Level 1 Trauma Center
• Private practice environment

The faculty members also have busy practices at two suburban Clarian facilities: Clarian North and Clarian West Hospitals. Clarian North is home to the Clarian Bariatric Program as well as the Minimally Invasive fellowship.

Residents: Residents rotate at all downtown hospitals and have elective time at North and West as well as a colorectal surgery elective available at St. Francis Hospital Mooresville. Each hospital provides a distinct clinical environment resulting in a tremendous variety of patients and clinical material for learning.

General Surgery faculty run M & M Conference, lead many teaching conferences, participate in professors' rounds, and run the surgical skills lab.

Fellowship programs in General Surgery include Minimally Invasive, Bariatric, Trauma-Critical Care, and Hepatobiliary.

Research: There are many clinical and basic science research projects available for interested residents and students:

Clinical Research: General Surgery has 5 full-time staff and nurses to facilitate clinical research on campus. Services include the preparation and submission of IRB materials, nnual IRB updates, budgeting, audits, and patient management and followup. There are currently over 20 active clinical research projects ongoing including investigator-initiated, industry sponsored, and through national organizations such as ACoSOG

Basic Science: Active research laboratories cover a wide variety of basic and translational research areas: 

• • • Obesity and pancreas carcinogenesis (Dr. Zyromski) 
    • Pathogenesis of IPMN (Dr. Schmidt)
    • Immunomodulation in cancer (Dr. Touloukian)
    • Nanoparticles and chemotherapy delivery (Dr. Clare)
    • Acute pancreatitis pathogenesis (Dr. Zyromski)
    • Colorectal carcinogenesis and novel therapies (Dr. Sheng)
    • Breast cancer carcinogenesis and novel therapies (Dr. Nakshatri)
    • Cancer epigenetics (Dr. House)
    • Normal breast tissue database (Dr. Clare)

IU-Kenya Program: Indiana University School of Medicine and Moi University School of Medicine in Eldoret, Kenya, have had a long-standing collaboration through the Department of Medicine, focusing on HIV-AIDS. The Section of General Surgery has played an important role in Kenya, also, focusing on the development of basic surgical services. David Mathews, M.D., has been the Section's and Department's connection to Eldoret and the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital. Dr. Matthews spent 4 years in Eldoret with his family where he designed and built a new four room (now 5) operating theater and helped organize clinical surgical services as well as the educational efforts in surgery for the Moi University Medical School. He has been instrumental in the recent approval of the local General Surgery Residency. Dr. Matthews has introduced many of the IU faculty to Kenya, including members of many other sections and departments including transplant, orthopedics, anesthesia, and ENT. Currently, three general surgery faculty members serve as annual external examiners for the Kenyan medical students year end oral exams.

The Section has hired Methenge Wairiuko, M.D., a Kenyan native and recent graduate of our training program, to be our full-time faculty member based in Eldoret. His responsibilities will be to augment the clinical needs of local general surgeons, update and maintain the general surgery curriculum for the 4th and 6th year medical students, and to host rotating IU students and residents doing electives in general surgery in Eldoret. The ultimate goals of the Section's presence in Kenya will be injury prevention, systematic trauma management, and burn prevention and treatment, which after infections are the biggest killers in Kenya.