St. Louis is new chief of pediatric and congenital heart surgery

Dr. James D. St. Louis, a pediatric and congenital heart surgeon with nearly two decades of experience leading pediatric cardiac transplant programs, has been named chief of the Section of Pediatric and Congenital Heart Surgery in the Department of Surgery at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University.

St. Louis, who was also named J. Harold Harrison, MD, Distinguished Chair in Pediatric Cardiothoracic Surgery, started at MCG and the Children’s Hospital of Georgia in August.

As chief, he will work to grow the pediatric and congenital heart program at CHOG in Augusta. He also will work with pediatric cardiology colleagues in the Department of Pediatrics to establish outreach cardiology clinics throughout Southeast and Southwest Georgia.

St. Louis, who was an assistant professor of surgery at MCG from 2003-08, comes back to Georgia’s public medical school from the University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Medicine where he was the Joseph Boon Gregg Endowed Chair in Pediatric Cardiac Surgery. He also directed the medical school’s Congenital Cardiac Surgery Fellowship Program and was surgical director of Pediatric Cardiac Transplantation.

He serves on the Governing Council of the World Society for Congenital and Pediatric Heart Surgery and chairs that group’s Research Committee. He has served as secretary of the World Database for Pediatric and Congenital Heart Surgery, working to unite the globe in addressing health care disparities in the treatment of children with congenital heart disease, work he will continue at MCG and CHOG.

A member of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons and the American Association of Thoracic Surgeons, he serves on multiple task forces, including the Workforce on Health Policy, Reform and Advocacy, which has been instrumental in addressing governmental mandates and policies concerning physician reimbursement. He also is a member of the Congenital Heart Surgeon Society’s Research and Bylaws committees.

St. Louis is surgical editor of the journal Cardiology in the Young, associate editor of Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery and Pediatric Cardiology and serves on the editorial board of the World Journal for Pediatric and Congenital Heart Surgery.

He earned his medical degree from Georgetown University and completed general and cardiothoracic surgery residencies at Duke University. He completed his pediatric and neonatal cardiac surgery fellowship at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri.

The J. Harold Harrison Chairs were established through a $66 million gift by the late, renowned vascular surgeon and 1948 MCG graduate. Harrison and wife Sue’s gift also enabled the establishment of 48 scholarships for medical students. An additional $10 million gift supported construction of the medical school’s academic home, the J. Harold Harrison, MD, Education Commons.