PITTSBURGH, Sept. 19, 2011 – Kareem Abu-Elmagd, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Intestinal Rehabilitation and Transplantation Center at UPMC’s Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute, has been named president of the Intestinal Transplant Association. A leader in the field of intestinal transplants, Dr. Abu-Elmagd’s two-year appointment as president was announced Saturday, Sept. 17 at the International Small Bowel Transplant Symposium in Washington, D.C.
Dr. Abu-Elmagd has led the UPMC program, the most successful of its kind, since the 1990s. Having worked under transplant pioneer Dr. Thomas Starzl, Dr. Abu-Elmagd is widely recognized for developing and standardizing many of the surgical techniques and post-transplant management methods that have made intestinal transplants, either alone or with other organs, both feasible and increasingly successful.
Under his direction, more than 500 intestinal transplants have been done at UPMC, more than any other center in the world. The program’s one-year survival rate for adult patients is 89 percent, well above the national average of 75 percent.
Dr. Abu-Elmagd came to the University of Pittsburgh in 1989 to complete a clinical fellowship in transplant surgery. He joined the faculty a year later and in 2001 was promoted to professor of surgery.
He holds a degree in medicine and a master’s degree in surgery from Mansoura University School of Medicine in Mansoura, Egypt, and a doctorate in surgery awarded jointly by Mansoura and Emory universities. He completed surgical residencies at Hurghada General Hospital in Hurghada, Egypt, and at Mansoura; a research fellowship in immunology at Wayne State University in Detroit; and a two-year clinical research fellowship at Emory University.