Children's makes the Top Doc list

Boston Magazine recently released its 2011 Top Doc list, made up of the best 650 physicians in the Hub. Seeing as Boston is home to some of the greatest medical minds on the planet, the list reads like a prestigious who’s-who roster of talent; a medical dream team spanning every aspect of treatment, from surgery to research and innovation.

Broken into 57 different specialties, doctors included on the list are voted for by fellow medical professionals, meaning that the Top Docs have not only gained the respect of the public and media, but of their peers as well.

Children’s Hospital Boston is proud to announce that over 10 percent of the entire list was made up of our staff, many of whom will be familiar to Thriving readers.

As director of the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center Boston Children’s Hospital, David Ludwig, MD, PhD, is a respected leader in childhood obesity research and prevention, as well as a regular Thriving contributor and interviewee. In a recent post Ludwig explains why he supports legislation that would restrict the amount of junk food available through public assistance programs. For more blogs on Dr. Ludwig’s work, click here.

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In 2004 Children’s Chief of Cardiac Surgery, Pedro del Nido, MD, was the first person to use the da Vinci surgical robot to fix a defect in a child’s heart, using child-sized tools of his own design. Read about another family whose child was also saved by Dr. del Nido’s surgical expertise and steady hands.

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Mininder Kocher, MD, MPH, associate director of Children’s Division of Sports Medicine, helps many young athletes work through their sports related injuries. Most recently Dr. Kocher and one of his patients was featured on ABC World News, a segment that included a guest appearance by Patriots quarterback Tom Brady.

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David Hunter, MD, PhD, Ophthalmologist-in-Chief at Children’s Hospital Boston’s Department of Ophthalmology has spent years helping young people see better. In this recent blog post, Dr. Hunter weighs in on new research that indicates that the amount of time a toddler spends outside could have a direct, positive relationship on his developing eyesight.

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Lisa Diller, MD is the clinical director of the Dana-Farber/Children’s Hospital Cancer Center (DF/CHCC), where she works as part of a multi-disciplinary team devoted to curing pediatric cancers. But as science is now discovering, the therapies that are so effective at saving children’s lives can also occasionally lead to problems down the road (called the late effects of cancer treatment.) Some of the more common concerns surrounding late effects of cancer treatment have to do with its effects on fertility, and in this blog post, Dr. Diller describes the great lengths doctors are now going to in order to help preserve the fertility of young patients with cancer.

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Dr. Norman Spack, 1996 — Norman Spack, MD

Norman Spack, MD, is an endocrinologist and a leading expert in gender identity disorder in children and adolescents. Spack co-launched the interdisciplinary Gender Management Service (GeMS) Clinic at Children’s—the first pediatric academic program in the Western Hemisphere to evaluate and medically treat young transgender people. In this blog you’ll meet a family that says with Spack’s help their transgender daughter has been given the opportunity to “live her dreams.”

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As Chief of Gynecology and Associate in Surgery, Marc Laufer, MD has conducted novel research in adolescent medicine that has greatly improved treatments for female patients with reproductive conditions. For 13 years, he has also been the Co-Director of the Center for Young Women’s Health, which brings adolescent health education online. Learn how a conference run by Laufer and his team has changed a young woman’s life.

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As director of Children’s Advanced Fetal Care Center, Russell Jennings, MD, is no stranger to high tech surgical suites. But his affinity for technology doesn’t end there. In a recent blog post, Jennings talks at length about how he believes doctors can use social media like Facebook to interact with patients, making it a powerful tool for spreading factual medical information.