Robert S. Poston, MD, has been named chief of cardiac surgery at Boston Medical Center and will be recommended for an appointment as an associate professor of cardiothoracic surgery at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM). Dr. Poston comes to Boston Medical Center from the University of Maryland School of Medicine, where he served as associate professor of cardiac surgery.

Dr. Poston has pioneered the use of robotics in minimally invasive surgery to treat the most complex forms of coronary artery disease, which afflicts 16 million Americans and is the leading cause of death in the United States, claiming 1 million lives each year.

Minimally invasive, robotically-assisted bypass surgery allows the surgeon to remove or redirect a blood vessel from one part of the body and place it around the obstructed part of the artery, effectively by-passing it and restoring blood flow to the heart muscle. With this procedure the patient has smaller scars, fewer side effects and complications, less pain, reduced risk of infection and faster recovery than with conventional bypass-graft surgery.

BMC, under Dr. Poston’s leadership, will be the only hospital in Boston — and one of only a handful in the nation — to offer this innovative procedure that uses the da Vinci® robotic surgical equipment.

After receiving his medical degree from Johns Hopkins Medical School, Dr. Poston completed a residency in general surgery at the University of California-San Francisco. He also completed a research fellowship in Cardiothoracic Surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine, and a cardiothoracic residency at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Dr. Poston is the recipient of an RO1 research grant from the National Institutes of Health and is the first/senior author of close to 100 papers and abstracts.

To schedule an appointment with Dr. Poston, call (617) 638-7350 or email him at robert.poston@bmc.org . Dr. Poston is also available via pager 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at (617) 638-5795 #CABG (#2224).