The Top Doctors in the Twin Cities, 2018

Stories of science, medicine, hope, and (perhaps) miracles.

by

A doctor orchestrates an operation to separate conjoined twins—with a 42-person surgical team in the OR. A trauma surgeon removes a four-inch wood shard that’s pierced a construction worker’s eye and brain. A burn doctor figures out how to collect healthy skin grafts when 80 percent of the patient’s skin has been damaged. When you drive by the hospital, this is what’s going on inside. 

In between the strep tests and the 24-hour Walgreens runs and the endless copays, we tend to forget that our doctors also, not infrequently, achieve the miraculous. That is to say, they bring deep expertise and great empathy to transforming the lives of their patients. Us.  

We interviewed six celebrated Twin Cities doctors about what it’s like to perform some of the most difficult medical procedures—and what they love about doing it. Plus, we identify more than 800 of the best doctors in town, as selected by their peers.

See the complete list of doctors selected to this year's Top Doctors.

+ Extracting a Four-Inch Wood Splinter

Dr. Uzma Samadani remembers the moment she realized she wanted to be a neurosurgeon. She was a third-year med student in her first neurosurgery rotation at Cook County Hospital in Chicago. In the midst of a frenetic 15-hour shift that included 23 patient admissions and consults, she encountered a once energetic boy—a young orphan. He’d come to the hospital for lethargy so powerful that he couldn’t get out of bed. A brain scan revealed a dangerous type of tumor called hemangioblastoma, which can cause gradual loss of consciousness.

Samadani watched as doctors immediately admitted him to the operating room. Once the senior surgeons finished removing the mass, the boy woke up.

“I had never seen anything like it,” Samadani says of the transformation. “I was completely blown away by how a human could intervene with his or her hands on another person’s pathology and make such a big difference to their lives.”

The daughter of a physician, Samadani recalls watching her father resuscitate someone using CPR. This powerful experience stayed with her. “I really wanted to help people,” she says. “I was very curious about injury and recovery, and how one could restore function,” she says.

Now, as a neurosurgeon in a level-one trauma center at Hennepin Healthcare (formerly known as Hennepin County Medical Center) and Minneapolis VA Medical Center, she tests her skills daily. “Trauma happens to anyone and it happens in the blink of an eye,” she says.

For construction worker Justin Siltala, that moment came on November 1 of last year. While he was doing a demolition job, a piece of falling debris shattered the handle of his shovel, propelling a wooden shard into his eye. From there, the splinter penetrated 4 to 5 inches into his brain cavity.

“The first thing you’re thinking about is saving the life,” Samadani says. But with a complex injury like this one, a doctor weighs other responsibilities. “The second thing you’re thinking about is quality of life. You want him to live with as little deficit as possible. I was worried about brain swelling and vascular injury. I was worried about blood vessels. If those are damaged, then there’s going to be major concern for long-term prognosis.”

If Siltala had enjoyed any luck, it’s that the wood splinter had entered his eye and brain at a favorable angle. “That stick essentially missed his carotid by less than a centimeter,” Samadani says. An injury there would have killed him.

After taking a few minutes to assess Siltala’s situation in the stabilization room, Samadani and ophthalmologist Dr. Catherine Georgiadis decided that Siltala’s brain should be operated on first. While another ophthalmologist, Dr. Jill Melicher Larson, mobilized her team to operate on his eye, Samadani’s team performed an emergency craniotomy, removed the stick—which had fractured his skull in two places—and washed the area with “copious lavage” to mitigate infection. Later, Samadani and her team implanted a customized craniofacial 3-D printed bone graft, which looks and acts like real bone. The ophthalmology surgical team was able to save his eye.

Siltala is now at home with his wife and six children and looks forward to returning to work. “I think the capacity for human recovery is amazing,” Samadani says.

Beyond emergency trauma cases, Samadani’s job also involves performing scheduled surgeries that are no less serious, such as removing brain and spine tumors. “I’ve always enjoyed taking tumors out,” she says. “It’s the fastest way to make someone feel better.” During these times, Samadani experiences what she calls a “series of happy moments”: when she senses she was able to fix what’s wrong, when a patient wakes up from surgery, and when the patient and family see the post-surgery films and the tumor is gone. “With each case, they’re all equally happy and equally satisfying, because you feel like you’ve achieved something,” she says.

Of course, some outcomes are more grave. There are times when the “pathology is too severe,” she says. When that happens, it “leaves a permanent scar” on her. “That’s the hardest part of this job.”

Outside the operating room, she works with her team—Dr. Ann Parr and Dr. David Darrow, both from the U of M—on clinical trials. “We are conducting a clinical trial to see if we can restore lower extremity function in paralyzed patients. We have four patients who were paralyzed due to spinal-cord injury and now they’re able to move their legs,” she says. “The hope,” she adds, “is that eventually they’ll be able to walk again.” 

+ Surgery at 90 Degrees

Burn victims who’ve suffered severe injuries to the face and body experience seemingly insurmountable hardships. So it’s surprising to hear Dr. William Mohr, of Regions Hospital, say he works in a field “where you get a lot of wins.” He and his team treat people with burns that cover 20 percent or more of their body surface, help them survive the trauma, and guide them back toward happy and productive lives. Remarkably, most people—97 percent, according to Mohr—have a very good chance of survival if they get to a specialized burn center, like the one at Regions.

Mohr likes to share the recovery stories of his patients, such as the young electrical linesman who was declared dead, eventually recovered, and was able to return home to his family. Then there was a high school basketball player whose burns covered more than 85 percent of his body. His healing ultimately enabled his return to the basketball court.

Amazing outcomes are not uncommon, but the recovery typically involves pain and patience along the way. The medical team needs to manage a lot of strategic treatment and periodic surgery to foster healing. It starts with the burn surgeon whose role it is to coordinate care for a patient who will be staying at the center for a month or longer. Mohr compares his role to that of a carpenter who’s building a house. “You do things in stages, and that sort of big project with a single patient is oddly gratifying,” he says.

The first week of recovery is critical and unflagging, when the patient is battling for life and fighting infection. “We’ve got to plan not just the first operation, but how many operations do we think it’s going to take to get all the burned skin off,” he explains. “Because that’s what’s driving them to be so sick in that first week.”

Experimenting with skin-removal techniques is part of the job. “Once you get that part done, then you have to have a plan for when and how are we going to get the area all covered with skin grafts.”

This can be especially challenging with extensive burns. If the burn covers 85 percent of the body, for instance, “then you only have 15 percent of their body surface that’s not burned. And maybe a third of that you wouldn’t use because it’s a part you’re not going to take skin from, like the face. You have to plan how you’re going to make that small amount of skin cover that whole body.” Mohr says that advancements in bioengineering have led to using less of a patient’s skin to cover more area without scarring.

The operating room is where the drama unfolds. “The environment in the OR is really not for everybody,” Mohr says. He keeps the room at a sweltering 85 or 90 degrees: Patients with damaged skin have difficulty regulating their body temperature. Operations can take several hours. Mohr and his team sweat profusely, yet they can’t always manage to drink enough water during a procedure. This can lead to dehydration and “a propensity to develop kidney stones,” says Mohr (he recently recovered from his third such episode).

“The other thing the burn operating room is known for, unfortunately, is we have to remove tissue back until we get healthy tissue, and healthy tissue bleeds. So removing burns involves a lot of blood loss. The result, as Mohr describes it, is an OR that looks like an old-school Sam Peckinpah movie. Medications like TXA and tourniquets can help reduce and control the bleeding.

What Mohr knows, through experience, is that the difficulties in the operating room represent the first steps in the patient’s long journey. “In all honesty, it’s a very short period of time where it’s about the burn surgeon, and the rest is the team”—that is, the nurses, specialists, and therapists. “We might get them to survive. But to get them back to their life—being happy that they’re alive and back doing the things they love—takes the greater team.” 

+ Breaking the Bond Between Two Tiny Girls

How do you fit 42 people into an operating room? Choreographing such a massive medical team represented just one of the challenges that Dr. Daniel Saltzman encountered in February 2017, when he began to plan an operation to separate 3-month-old conjoined twins. The baby girls were connected at birth from the chest to their belly button, and the surgery presented countless risks.

Saltzman, chief of pediatric surgery at University of Minnesota Health, is a woodworking hobbyist who loves building things with his hands. That same process of planning, ingenuity, and dexterity goes into his surgical practice on children who have the “bad luck” to suffer from a congenital anomaly. “I just really like the idea of being able to fix something and watching a kid grow and live for another 90 or 100 years,” Saltzman says.

Conjoined twins Paisleigh and Paislyn Martinez were born with a thoraco-omphalopagus abnormality. As Saltzman explains it, “They didn’t have a breastbone, their hearts were encased in one sac (pericardium), and their two livers were fused in the middle.”

Saltzman and the medical team at the U of M started making plans for the Martinez girls even before they were born. As soon as they learned the girls’ mother, Paris Bryant, planned to deliver her conjoined twins at their hospital, the team began to set the stage for four different acts or phases of care. “We had to have a delivery plan, we had to have a plan to care for them while they were conjoined, and then a plan for separation and how to care for them after separation,” Saltzman says.

Deep into this preparation phase, Saltzman and his team were struggling to map out the babies’ shared cardiac anatomy. (In addition to everything else, one of the girls had a congenital heart defect.) One of the cardiologists suggested that they contact the Earl E. Bakken Medical Devices Center at the University of Minnesota to see how advanced imaging and 3-D technology could help. “They never say no,” Saltzman says. “They dream with you.”

Using virtual-reality goggles and a 3-D model of the twins’ hearts, doctors discovered “that the hearts were in a different position, and they were connected in a different way that we didn’t quite appreciate.” Armed with this information a month before the surgery, the team altered its operative strategy and made plans to reposition the babies on the operating table.

In the days leading up to the intricate procedure, Saltzman and his team executed several dry runs of the surgery. “We simulated how we were going to do it, where are we going to stand, where are we going to put the babies.”

Since one baby had a congenital heart deformity, Saltzman knew there was a 90 percent chance of mortality with separation. But Saltzman felt confident the separation could be a success. It was excitement, and plenty of worry, that kept him awake the night before the procedure.

All their practice and preparation made for a perfect operation, though it lasted a marathon nine hours. “We had 42 people in the operating room,” Saltzman says. “It was like going to an orchestra and watching a symphony. Everybody knew what they were supposed to do. It was quiet. It was focused. It was directed. And the atmosphere was electric.”

Beyond the obvious elation of a successful procedure, Saltzman came away with a fresh appreciation for how the team had collaborated. Looking back, he says, “I think the secret is treating people with respect.” That means not being “close-minded” to new ideas.

A year after their surgery, the Martinez twins are thriving. Saltzman is planning to build them each a breastbone to replace the plastic “turtle shell” that currently protects their hearts. 

+ Heart to Heart: Living Longer After Transplants

When Dr. Sara Shumway was in the ninth grade, her father, Dr. Norman Shumway, performed the first successful human heart transplant in the United States. Though this medical breakthrough, back in 1968, surely influenced her path to practice medicine, there were other defining moments.

One year after that historic surgery, Shumway encountered her first woman science teacher—someone who also made biology fun. Then there was the backpacking trip she took the summer before her senior year. “I was trying to decide whether I wanted to be a doctor, a teacher, or a lawyer,” she recalls. After helping another girl along the trail who was experiencing altitude sickness, she realized what her path should be. “It was a good feeling to know that I had helped someone.”

Today she is a professor and vice chief of cardiothoracic surgery at the University of Minnesota, where she performs heart and lung transplants. She also practices “every kind of adult cardiac surgery,” such as coronary-artery-bypass grafting, valve repairs and replacements, and aortic work. In 2012, Shumway and her colleagues at the U of M began performing transcatheter aortic valve replacements: a minimally invasive procedure that helps high-risk patients with aortic stenosis avoid open-heart surgery. Perpetually inspired, even after working in this field for 30 years, she’s quick to say, “I still love it as much as I did when I first started out!”

Over the years, she has instructed generations of medical students, surgical residents, and fellows who are doing their training in cardiac surgery. “It’s fun because you see them grow into the role,” Shumway says. “And all they need is the opportunity to develop some confidence.”

Shumway’s tenure has also allowed her to observe profound advancements in cardiac medicine. When her father performed the first heart transplant, at Stanford University Medical Center, his patient lived for just 14 days.

Back in the 1980s, when Shumway was starting out, she notes, “If you did 20 heart operations in a month, you would probably have one patient that didn’t make it.” Now with patients that are good surgical candidates, she says that within the first month, “We can initially quote them a potential operative mortality of less than 2 percent.”

Many factors contribute to this success. “We really have a lot more to offer the patients in terms of better critical care in the immediate post-operative period,” Shumway says. “And we have more agents we can give the patients to stop bleeding. We also have better immunosuppressants to prevent rejection and better antibiotics to help prevent infection.”

Despite these advancements, setbacks persist. “The problem with a heart transplant is it doesn’t last forever,” Shumway says. With a kidney transplant that stops working, a patient can turn to dialysis. “But there aren’t a lot of good options if you have a heart transplant that’s not working very well anymore, other than another heart.”

Currently, she has a patient who needs her third heart transplant at age 28. Shumway did this patient’s first heart transplant at age 4 and the second at age 18. The longest-lasting heart transplant on record is a little more than 30 years.

Shumway focuses her research on the improvement of heart- and lung-transplant outcomes and the study of new medical devices, such as left ventricular-assist devices. They are “small devices we put in the chest to give the heart a boost,” she says. These can be a long-term solution or “a bridge to transplant.”

Shumway enjoys staying in touch with her heart transplant patients. “I’ll get cards from them, usually during the holidays. They’ll say things like, ‘I’m still here.’” She also will reconnect with patients at Second Chance for Life, a support group for heart-transplant candidates, recipients, and their families. One such patient was a 54-year-old state trooper, who’s now retired. “I always thought if I did a heart transplant on a state trooper I wouldn’t get stopped for speeding, but that has not proved to be the case,” she says with a laugh. “I have a little lead in my right foot apparently.”

The cure for this particular foible has so far proved elusive.

+ Treating the Kid, Not Just the Cancer

Pediatric oncologist Dr. Susan Sencer recently received a note in the mail from a former patient. He was no longer a kid, or even a young adult, but rather a 40-year-old man. As a 4-year-old, he’d come to Sencer with a rhabdomyosarcoma—that is, a highly malignant cancer—on his face. Today, the once-sick child is a schoolteacher and father of two, who goes on 100-mile bike rides and took a paddling trip down the Amazon.

Working in hematology and oncology at Children’s Minnesota, Sencer (previously the program’s director) sees a lot of children with cancer. “Most of the time, thank goodness, it ends in a fully functional person who has survived this blip in their life’s road,” she says. A board filled with holiday cards, graduation announcements, and wedding invitations serves as a reminder of the lives they’ve touched.

When that doesn’t happen, Sencer and the whole team at Children’s feel the child and the family’s deep loss. “But we’re with them to the end, no matter what,” she says. “Even when families lose a child, they want to keep in touch. It’s an intense bond and that’s part of what draws me to it.”

Beyond her patient care, Sencer feels engaged with the constant developments in cancer research. “The science behind it is just as compelling,” she says. “It’s highly emotionally satisfying but scientifically challenging. It’s that blend that appealed to me 30 years ago and appeals to me now.”

For example, she describes how CAR-T cell immunotherapy is helping patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. “You’re taking out the patient’s own white cells—their T cells—and turning them into a Pac-Man that then goes back into the individual’s body and attacks the cancer cells.”

Yet families often arrive with different thoughts about finding wellness. Over time, this observation led Sencer to become interested in combining high-tech medicine (chemotherapy and radiation) with integrative medicine—that is, finding ways to make “high-tech medicine high-touch.” Sencer adds, “Children’s was the first pediatric hospital to have a clinical integrative medicine program.” Patient care may include bodywork, massage therapy, nutrition, aromatherapy, supplements, biofeedback, and acupuncture.

Looking at care through this lens affects the conversations Sencer has with patients and parents. She’ll ask questions like, What is your child like? and How do they cope when bad things happen? “Everybody has a story,” Sencer explains. “Part of our job as physicians is to help people tell their stories in a way that other people can hear them.

“Oftentimes people are stunned because nobody’s ever asked that before. What’s your kid like? But then I think it comes pretty quickly. ‘He’s pretty happy. She’s afraid of grownups. He never has slept well through the night.’ Any of these things help—no matter how seemingly minor—make up who that child is. That helps us as a medical team figure out how we’re going to approach him.”

All of these things can help a child overcome the ailment. “We don’t cure cancer,” Sencer says. “People cure their own cancer with the help of all of our therapies.” 

+ Challenging Brain Cancer: “If They’re Not Giving Up, Then I’m not Giving Up”

As a pianist and martial art student, Dr. Clark Chen enjoys “the beauty of repetitive motions.” He’s also astonished by the complexity of the human brain. “When you think about the brain in the following way, there’s maybe only 400 billion stars in our galaxy. We have 100 billion neurons in our brain. Between the 100 billion neurons, it’s estimated that there’s 100 trillion connections—all that density of extraordinary biology is squeezed within three-and-a-half cans of Coke. The volume of 1200 cc’s. If that doesn’t fascinate you, what would?!”

Combine that neurological amazement with the field of oncology and you’ve got the perfect environment for “intellectual intrigue.” From the start of his medical studies, Chen was hooked. Today this neurosurgeon at the University of Minnesota treats patients with brain cancers that require complicated surgeries. But that’s only part of the puzzle. Chen also devotes his practice to multilayered postsurgical care, clinical trials, and other forms of treatment.

Chen specializes in glioblastoma.The most common form of primary adult brain cancer, it doesn’t include cancers that spread from other areas of the body. A challenging disease to manage, it’s the cancer that plagued Senator Edward Kennedy and Beau Biden, and it currently affects Senator John McCain.

It’s a difficult diagnosis to give his patients. “We see an evolution from sad despair to a fragile courage,” he says. Then a calmness often sets in. “There’s a transformation that occurs with a sense of purpose. It’s really extraordinary to see that physical manifestation of the exceptional, extraordinary human spirit.”

Chen concludes, “It’s that which keeps me going. If they’re not giving up, then I’m not giving up.”

Chen’s Chinese name, he says, means “one who studies” or “master of knowledge.” His family immigrated from Taiwan when Chen was 14 years old to the small town of La Mirada, California. He recalls feeling different: Only five Asian families lived in town. Chen needed to learn his new culture while dodging neighborhood bullies. “I understand what it feels like to be helpless,” he says.

Empathy for the underdog is a helpful trait when you’re treating brain cancers. Long-term survival may not be a possibility. A practitioner needs to find other ways to inspire hope.

Chen recalls a woman who came to see him after her husband observed she seemed less argumentative than usual. It turned out she had a tumor on the left side of the brain in the area that controls speech.

“When a tumor compresses on the brain, and the brain gets numb, it impacts things like the ability to speak,” Chen says. After removing the tumor, she resumed her quarreling ways—much to her husband’s chagrin. “The fact that they were able to be humorous about the situation was an indication of strength to me.”

Meet the 2018 Top Doctors

See the complete list of doctors selected to this year's Top Doctors.

The 22nd edition of our Top Doctors list includes 825 doctors in 45 specialties. Here’s how we put it together. When compiling a list that’s as relied upon as our annual Top Doctors list, 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 45 specialties and evaluated on myriad factors, including (but not limited to) peer recognition, professional achievement, extensive research, 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. Only doctors who acquired the highest total points from the surveys, the research, and the expert physician review panel were selected to this list. 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, this year’s crop of Top Doctors 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.

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.

© 2018 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 May 1, 2018.

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