LIVE TONIGHT on Thursday, August 26th at 7 pm, ‘TriVersity Talk!’ welcomes Dr. John Pang (Top Left), Dr. Bella Avanessian (Bottom Left), and Dr. Jess Ting (Right) from the Mt. Sinai Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery. Together, Drs. Pang, Avanessian & Ting make up part of Mt. Sinai’s Plastic Surgery Team and provide gender-affirming surgeries of all types. Join us as we learn more about these extraordinary physicians and the work they perform.
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JOHN PANG, MD
Dr. John Pang (he/him) is an Assistant Professor of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at the Mount Sinai Health System in New York.
A native of Hawaii, Dr. Pang earned his medical degree from the John A. Burns School of Medicine at the University of Hawaii, Manoa in 2009. He completed a general surgery residency at Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia. He then completed a plastic and reconstructive surgery residency at the University of Pittsburgh, followed by the Transgender Surgery/Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Fellowship at Mount Sinai in 2019.
Dr. Pang’s clinical interests are in the areas of general aesthetic and reconstructive surgery, focusing on complex genital, face, and chest reconstruction, and aesthetic surgery/body contouring. He provides specialized care for the transgender/gender non-conforming community. Dr. Pang has published and lectured broadly on the topics of plastic surgery and transgender care, and remains active in clinical outcomes research in transgender surgery.
He maintains a strong interest in surgical education at the medical student and resident training levels, particularly as it pertains to plastic surgery and transgender care.
Dr. Pang is currently the Research Group Lead for the Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He is an active member of the World Professional Association of Transgender Health. He has received multiple awards for leadership and research, has presented widely at national conferences and university programs, and has been published in many peer-reviewed journals.
BELLA AVANESSIAN, MD
Dr. Bella Avanessian (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Surgery at the Mount Sinai Health System in New York. She is a board-certified plastic surgeon and an active member of the ASPS (American Society of Plastic Surgeons).
Dr. Avanessian received both her bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering and her medical degree from Brown University in Providence, RI. She then completed her residency training in plastic and reconstructive surgery at Brown University/Rhode Island Hospital. In 2017, she became the first-ever transgender surgery trainee in the country when she joined Mount Sinai as the inaugural fellow in their Transgender Surgery Fellowship (under renowned surgeons Drs. Jess Ting and Marci Bowers). She stayed on as faculty at Mount Sinai thereafter.
Her clinical focus is dedicated to the care of transgender and gender non-binary patients. She performs surgeries that include feminization and masculinization of the face, chest, and genitalia. She also has clinical interests in adolescent care and in genital reconstruction for intersex patients, cis-gender women, and victims of female genital mutilation.
Dr. Avanessian is a member of the Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. She has co-authored many publications and book chapters and has been featured as a presenter at national meetings and in invited lectureships.
JESS TING, MD
A native New Yorker, Dr. Ting studied music at the Juilliard School before switching careers to medicine. He attended the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and graduated first in his medical school class. This was followed by general surgery training at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, plastic surgery training at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and a hand/microsurgery fellowship at the Hospital for Special Surgery. Dr. Ting led Mount Sinai’s first surgical genital reassignment surgery for the transgender population — a male-to-female operation called vaginoplasty. The procedure was completed in March 2016 with other procedures quickly following, including: metoidioplasty, phalloplasty, facial feminization surgery and chest surgery. Most recently, Dr. Ting pioneered a new approach to vaginoplasty, called the Peritoneum Vaginoplasty<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-n73IzBd7M&feature=youtu.be>, which uses one’s own peritoneum lining to create a new vagina with similar properties to a cis-vagina.
With these groundbreaking surgeries, Mount Sinai became the first institution in New York City to offer genital reassignment surgery. To further provide comprehensive care to this community, Mount Sinai established the Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery (CTMS)<https://www.mountsinai.org/locations/center-transgender-medicine-surgery> – one of the first programs in the United States to offer broad, multispecialty transgender care in one location. To date, Dr. Ting’s team has performed more than 2,000 operations, making Mount Sinai not only one of the first institutions in the country to offer transgender surgeries, but now one of the busiest.
Dr. Ting performs research in transgender health and his clinical practice is limited to the surgical care of the transgender/gender non-conforming community, as well as victims of female genital mutilation.