The Pediatric Surgical Practice of Cathy Burnweit, MD, Leopoldo Malvezzi, MD, Fuad Alkhoury, MD, and Juan L. Calisto, MD is devoted to the comprehensive surgical care of newborns, infants and children.

The practice is based on the campus of Nicklaus Children’s Hospital. The surgeons are members of the hospital’s medical staff and its teaching faculty. The group also serves the pediatric surgical needs associated with the Nicklaus Children’s Hospital Emergency Department. Its physicians direct the care of children with serious traumatic injury at the hospital’s state-designated, Level 1 Pediatric Trauma Center, the only freestanding pediatric trauma center in Florida.

Each year, the team performs more than 2,000 major and 1,500 minor operative procedures. The practice offers the most current open and minimal access surgical techniques for a wide range of conditions, including complex neonatal congenital anomalies, management of solid tumors, thoracic surgery, chest wall defects, neck lesions, treatment of appendicitis, and all forms of abdominal wall, inguinal and scrotal conditions.

The practice has been involved in numerous regional medical firsts, including participating in the separation of conjoined twins, the introduction of new surgical treatments for pectus excavatum and an “incisionless” procedure for treatment of appendicitis. The practice was recently ranked number one in the nation by Children’s Health Corporation of America in the care of appendicitis among 40 participating children’s hospitals. The study included both patient outcomes and hospital length of stay. Further, the practice collaborates with the Critical Care Medicine team at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital to provide extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), a life-saving therapy in the care of the most critically ill children.

Our practice’s success is in part due to the team’s personal attention to patients and their families, the use of state-of-the-art surgical techniques, as well as an aggressive approach to the management of post-operative pain.