Description of the Fellowship

Clinical Responsibilities

The Head and Neck Fellowship program at Mount Sinai offers a 12 month comprehensive experience in the management of patients undergoing head and neck surgery for malignant and advanced benign disease. This concentrated experience includes all aspects of surgical care including diagnosis, treatment planning, ablative and reconstructive surgery and post-operative surveillance. (See below.) The Head and Neck fellowship program at Mount Sinai is completely separate from facial plastic, plastic and reconstructive, and other related fellowship programs at Mount Sinai. This is true in terms of patient population, faculty mentorship, and clinical/surgical experiences.

Patients treated for head and neck malignancy are managed by the Head and Neck Service at Mount Sinai, in terms of the surgical/reconstructive aspects of their care. The clinical/surgical responsibilities of the fellows and residents are shared experiences at the discretion of the head and neck faculty. Major ablative head and neck surgery and microvascular reconstruction cases are performed by attending staff, the head and neck fellow, and the residents in a graded, experience based approach. In general the fellowship has had a positive influence on resident training at Mount Sinai.

The Head and Neck Fellow will:

1. Participate in all major head and neck operative cases, including microvascular reconstruction. The fellow will have the opportunity to select the case most appropriate to his training goals if multiple major head and neck cases are occurring simultaneously. He/she also has the freedom to select cases of interest which occur at our affiliated sites.
2. Participate in Multidisciplinary Head and Neck Oncology Clinic (See Weekly Schedule).
3. The fellow will take call at faculty level in rotation with the faculty of the Head and Neck Service. The fellow is supervised by the faculty while on call for the Head and Neck Service. Weekend call is approximately every four weeks. Weekday evening call is one in every four to five weeks.

Surgical training experience will include:

• Full scope ablative Head and Neck Oncology experience including, mucosal, paranasal/skullbase, salivary, and cutaneous disease.
• Reconstructive experience including local, regional, and free tissue transfer for ablative defects of the head and neck.
• Transoral robotic and laser surgery for head and neck malignancies including oropharyngeal, tongue, larynx.
• Extensive endocrine experience including management of thyroid and parathyroid malignancies.
• Management of advanced benign lesions of the head and neck including salivary, schwannoma, paraganglioma, etc.
• Comprehensive surgical management of the head and neck oncology patient including ancillary procedures such as airway reconstruction, voice restoration, facial nerve re-animation, etc.