Biographies

Dr. Gary Fudem

Dr. Gary Fudem is a retired Professor of Surgery from the divisions of Plastic Surgery & Burns. He helped to train residents for more than 35 years at several universities nationally and internationally. As a plastic surgeon and burn surgeon, he operated on almost every part of the body realizing that appearance and functional recovery are inextricably interwoven. This website represents the work of several people; however, essentially it is an introduction to his last 10 years of surgical and clinical research. He hopes that this new knowledge will stimulate questions and be of interest to more than just surgeons. Now that he has time in retirement, he also dabbles in creative writing and fly-fishing.

Dr. Arriyan Samandar Dowlatshahi

Dr. Arriyan (Sammy) Dowlatshahi is the Director of Orthoplastic & Reconstructive Microsurgery at one of the Harvard Medical School Hospitals in Boston, Massachusetts. In both his teaching and clinical practice, he appreciates the need to define and appreciate the purposefulness of anatomy from both an aesthetic and functional point of view.

Stephanie Francalancia

Stephanie Francalancia is a medical illustrator and medical student at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School. She recently graduated from Columbia University with an M.S. in Narrative Medicine, exploring the intersection of humanities and clinical care. Before this, she majored in Art & Design and Biology at the University of Michigan. She is extremely grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this website with Dr. Fudem’s and Dr. Dowlatshahi’s cutting-edge research and looks forward to watching it grow in the future.

Acknowledgement for Dr. Chandini Perera

“I would like to acknowledge Chandini Perera, a plastic surgeon specializing in burns in Colombo, Sri Lanka, for opening my eyes to the existence and importance of subcutaneous tethers. Her ideas immediately changed the way I view and operate on the human body. After seeing pictures of some of her outstanding surgical outcomes in severely burnt patients, we communicated for almost ten years by email and one in-person visit to her burns unit. I headed to the cadaver lab to clarify this layer of anatomy. I know that her patients are forever grateful to her for giving them their lives back, but I would also like to say ‘Thank you Chandini’ for your creative and practical insights. With this acknowledgment to your ideas and accomplishments, I present this work as proof of your concepts that hopefully will change the way we all see and interact with the human body.” — Dr. Gary Fudem