2019 Top Doctors Rising Stars
Medical schools, as a rule, select talented, high-test candidates to fill the ranks. So, what qualities distinguish the best of the best once these doctors have been working in their field for five to 10 years? We talked with three doctors who demonstrate a combination of key qualities: a fascination with solving medical puzzles; a deep commitment to meaningful, cutting-edge care; and a sense of the possibility in their work.
Dr. Travis Pagliara
Travis Pagliara, MD, Urologist, Hennepin Healthcare
Overcoming Urological Challenges
Growing up in Tennessee, Dr. Travis Pagliara always had a knack for math. He considered medicine but decided to study biomedical engineering in college. The son of a financial planner, Pagliara had a 20-year plan to use his engineering skills to develop a medical product, device, or technique that he could turn into a business. But that plan changed in a college research lab.
"The thing I’ve learned in surgery is you can go in with a plan, but when the body throws you a curve, you’ve got to be ready to work around it.”
—Travis Pagliara, MD, Urologist, Hennepin Healthcare
When did you decide to be a doctor?
As an undergrad, I was working in a lab operating on mice for a transplant surgeon. He offered to meet me at 5:30 one morning to see how I was doing. Just watching his hands move as he worked, I thought, “I need to be a surgeon.” It was so fluid. He was so calm and collected. There wasn’t a move that was without purpose.
So how did you land on urology for a specialty?
A friend who was a urology resident invited me to visit their clinic, and I got hooked. Urology is a specialty where you get to care for patients for a long time, as opposed to an orthopedic surgeon, where you fix the knee, and a physical therapist or nurse practitioner takes care of the rest. Most urology issues are followed chronically, and I love providing that long-term care.
One in seven men is going to get prostate cancer. With treatment, there is a risk of incontinence and erectile dysfunction. Urology was the first among all the surgeries to start doing minimally invasive surgeries. We have led with robotics. The inflatable penile prosthesis and artificial sphincter that have been around for 40 years were invented in Minneapolis.
In my fellowship, most of my research was on erectile dysfunction, male incontinence, and urethra stricture disease—scar tissue within the urethra, because with an implant, you have to handle all the associated problems. It’s knowing how to fix anything that can go wrong.
What is the best part of working in a public hospital like Hennepin Healthcare?
I love working at Hennepin because it’s the purest form of medicine. I don’t have to wonder if the patients have a million dollars or are homeless. I get to treat everyone the same and practice my craft with the ultimate goal of making as many people better as I can.
How would you like to see your field evolve?
Patient education. I get calls from family, friends, friends of friends who saw their doctor—and it’s usually a urologist if they are calling me. They say, “I don’t know what any of it means.” There is a wide disconnect between what the public knows and what you learn as a practitioner. I want to close that gap with a better type of WebMD, not one where you feel you have a terminal illness every time you have a cough but something that has a basis in academia and in research.
Dr. Jennifer Hsia
Jennifer HsiA, MD, Otolaryngology/Sleep surgery, University of Minnesota
Solving Sleep Apnea Issues
Born and raised in Tuscaloosa, Alabama,Dr. Jennifer Hsia played tennis in high school and for four years on Indiana University’s varsity team, and planned to become an orthopedic surgeon. But in her third year of medical school, she discovered two things. She realized she didn’t like orthopedics, so a career in sports medicine wasn’t going to happen. However, she adds, “When I got to my surgery rotation, it just clicked. I knew I was with my people. I ended up in an ENT rotation and just fell in love with the types of surgeries they did.”
"There is also a neurologic component to sleep apnea. So, the idea of nerve stimulation or muscle stimulation to get the muscles of the throat to ‘act in a normal way’ is very exciting.”
—Jennifer Hsia, MD, Otolaryngology/Sleep surgery, University of Minnesota
Why ear, nose, and throat surgery?
I always liked tinkering with toys and using my hands. I am a very visual person. The anatomy of the head and neck was absolutely fascinating, and the surgeries were really delicate. I did my otolaryngology training at the University of Washington and studied with a surgeon who is the type of person that I strive to be. He was caring to his patients and very scientific in his approach to managing sleep apnea. That combination was really inspiring to me.
How has that example continued to influence the work you do today?
I strive to listen to every patient. Everyone has a different story. They come in with this umbrella sleep apnea term, but how it affects each person is very different. It’s important to tailor our treatment plan to that person’s biggest issue. My goal is to not necessarily do surgery; it’s just to help someone find a better night’s rest.
How common is sleep apnea?
It’s estimated that 9 to 20 percent of people have sleep apnea. It’s more common in males than females. In general, people are predisposed to it. Among risk factors that can contribute to sleep apnea and make it worse, weight is one of the biggest. But not everyone with sleep apnea is overweight, and not everyone who is overweight has sleep apnea.
As someone whose life’s work is studying sleep, why is it so important?
Sleep is an essential part of our life. It is our ability to rest, reboot, and restore our brain function, our body function, to the highest level. Any disruption in the sleep cycle will affect our ability to concentrate, to do daily tasks, and our moods.
What does the future hold for your field?
There is both an anatomic and neurological component to sleep apnea. We are tapping into nerve stimulation technology. An implant I use stimulates the tongue nerve, and keeps the tongue from falling back and choking people. In the next 10 years, we will see more technology-driven management of nerve and muscle stimulation.
Do you get enough sleep?
That’s a great question. I do best with 8-9 hours of sleep but only get about 6-7 hours. It’s a work in progress.
Dr. Ashish Y. Mahajan
Ashish Y. Mahajan, MD, Plastic Surgeon, Regions Hospital and Hennepin healthcare
Using Complex Microsurgery to Transform Lives
Dr. Ashish Mahajan’s route to the operating room started in an art studio. Initially, he planned a career in architecture and earned a B.A. in art at Yale. However, after studying and working with art in San Francisco for a year, he decided to go back to school and study engineering, math, biology, and chemistry at Arizona State. “My father is a professor of applied physics, and both of my brothers have advanced degrees in math and physics, so it seemed natural to return to the sciences,” he says.
I could do 20 carpal tunnel surgeries in the time it takes to do one complex reconstruction, but there is a degree of craft and challenge in the larger cases that I enjoy.”
—Ashish Y. Mahajan, MD, Plastic Surgeon, Regions Hospital and Hennepin Healthcare
How are art and medicine similar?
Like art, there is a practical applied side of medicine that I found fascinating. You see a problem, you have a list of things you can do and skills that can be applied to help somebody almost immediately.
How did you make the leap to doing hand surgery and reconstructive plastic surgery?
At the University of Pittsburgh Medical School, I was working on a general surgery service helping to treat women with breast cancer who underwent mastectomies. One of the plastic surgeons did breast reconstruction by removing skin and fat from the abdomen to reconstruct a breast. At the end of the surgery, the woman had a closed abdomen and a new breast all at the same time as her mastectomy. I was fascinated by the surgeon’s detailed knowledge of anatomy, technical skill, and ability to reconstruct the missing part in a single complex procedure. I knew that’s what I wanted to do.
Much of your work happens on a very micro scale.
Microsurgery is a field of reconstructive surgery which involves using a microscope, fine instruments, and small sutures to operate on a scale that would be otherwise impossible. These surgeries themselves can take eight, 10, 12 hours in a team effort, with multiple surgeons. I enjoy this practice because of the dramatic difference we can make in our patients’ lives, because of the constant challenges it presents, and because of our close ties to surgeons in other specialties.
What is state of the art in your field?
Microsurgery has become an expected part of care in an advanced trauma center. As reconstructive plastic surgeons, we collaborate with other specialists to solve difficult problems. For example, bone, muscle, skin, nerves, or lymph nodes can be moved from one region of the body to another to help restore a part missing due to cancer or injury. An amputated part, such as a finger or hand, can be replanted using microsurgery. Missing tissues can also be transplanted from a donor, as in face and hand transplantation. These are emerging fields.
*Interviews have been edited/compressed for space.
Meet the rising stars
This is the fifth edition of our Top Doctors Rising Stars list. While our Top Doctors list has always recognized medical excellence in our community, with this edition we once again turn our attention to outstanding physicians who have been fully licensed to practice for approximately 10 years or less. This list includes 406 doctors in 44 specialties.
When compiling any list of this nature, research is essential. We asked physicians to nominate one or more doctors (excluding themselves) to whom they would go if they or a loved one were seeking medical care. From there, candidates were grouped into 44 specialties and evaluated on myriad factors, including (but not limited to) peer recognition, professional achievement, and disciplinary history. Doctors who had the highest scores from each grouping were invited to serve on a blue-ribbon panel that evaluated the other candidates. In the end, only doctors who acquired the highest total points from the surveys, research, and blue-ribbon panel review were selected as Mpls.St.Paul Magazine’s 2019 Top Doctors: Rising Stars.
Of course, no list is perfect. Many qualified doctors who are providing excellent care to their patients are not included on this year’s list. However, if you’re looking for exceptional physicians who have earned the confidence and high regard of their peers, you can start your search here. In addition to the list you find here, this year’s group of Rising Stars will join a prestigious group of doctors from more than 20 cities around the country who have been selected to Super Doctors, the full list of which you can find at superdoctors.com.
See the full list of 2019 Rising Stars here.
Editor’s Note: Many of our Top Doctors have specialty certification recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties. This board certification requires substantial additional training in a doctor’s area of practice. We encourage you to discuss this board certification with your doctor to determine its relevance to your medical needs. More information about board certification is available at abms.org.
© 2019 MSP Communications. All rights reserved. Super Doctors® is a registered trademark of MSP Communications.
Disclaimer: The information presented is not medical advice, nor is Super Doctors a physician referral service. We strive to maintain a high degree of accuracy in the information provided. We make no claim, promise, or guarantee about the accuracy, completeness, or adequacy of the information contained in the directory. Selecting a physician is an important decision that should not be based solely on advertising. Super Doctors is the name of a publication, not a title or moniker conferred upon individual physicians. No representation is made that the quality of services provided by the physicians listed will be greater than that of other licensed physicians, and past results do not guarantee future success. Super Doctors is an independent publisher that has developed its own selection methodology; it is not affiliated with any federal, state, or regulatory body. Self-designated practice specialties listed in Super Doctors do not imply “recognition” or “endorsement” of any field of medical practice, nor do they imply certification by a Member Medical Specialty Board of the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) or that the physician has competence to practice the specialty. List research concluded February 5, 2019.
