Transplant Hepatology Fellowship Program

Comprehensive, state-of-the art training in transplant care

The Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition at Vanderbilt University Medical Center offers a one-year fellowship in transplant hepatology for highly qualified candidates who have completed an ACGME-accredited fellowship in Gastroenterology.

This fellowship offers comprehensive training in management of advanced liver disease, pre-transplant and post-transplant care, and immunosuppression management. The Transplant fellow works closely with our multidisciplinary team of transplant surgeons, nurse practitioners, transplant coordinators, psychiatrists, and social workers, among others.

The Transplant Hepatology fellow has a balanced schedule that ensures varied clinical exposure, rigorous clinical learning, and effective participation in scholarly activities. The goal of the fellowship is to build a solid foundation for the fellow to excel in academic Transplant Hepatology and to move the field forward. The majority of our fellows go on to join academic institutions upon graduation.

Vanderbilt Transplant Center

The Vanderbilt Transplant Center is one of the 10 largest transplant institutes in the United States. The VUMC liver transplant program performs 160-180 transplants a year including living donor liver transplant, multiorgan transplant (heart-liver, lung-liver, and kidney-liver), and liver transplant for cholangiocarcinoma. Since its inception, the Vanderbilt Liver Transplant program has performed over 2,600 transplants.

While inpatient and outpatient hepatology rotations represent the bulk of this fellowship, fellows still have several one- to two-week blocks dedicated to scholarly activities throughout the academic year. Below is the summary of the rotations schedule:

Rotation Name	Duration	Settings
Inpatient*	24 weeks	Transplant Hepatology ward & Hepatology consults (16 weeks) Liver Transplant Surgery Ward (1st 3 months of post-LT care; 8 weeks)
Outpatient* Δ	18 weeks (plus continuity clinic)	Transplant Hepatology clinic (4 half day clinics/week) General Hepatology clinic (4 half day clinics/week) Endoscopy (including training on glue injection for gastric varices; half day a week)
Scholarly activities	10 weeks	Clinical research Quality improvement and/or quality assessment

*Rotations with our Hepatology service at Nashville VA (Veterans Affairs) hospital are available upon request.

Δ During the second half of the academic year, the fellow rotates for five half days with each of the following collaborating outpatient specialties: obesity medicine, addiction medicine, palliative care, and pathology. This has been incorporated into our fellowship given the essential role of each of these specialties in modern hepatology practice.

Vanderbilt University is one of the premier research institutions in the country. Among Departments of Medicine (DOM) across the nation, Vanderbilt DOM has been repeatedly among the top 5 in NIH (National Institutes of Health) funding, which reflects Vanderbilt’s vision, infrastructure, and support for research.

Our fellows have access to short-term clinical research funding (e.g., small grants by the Vanderbilt Institute for Clinical and Translational Research), which usually helps expediting projects completion during this 12-month long, clinically busy fellowship. Our current and prior fellows have presented their work at national and international conferences, received national and international awards, and published in the field’s premier journals.

With the breadth of the available expertise at our institution, fellows are provided with guidance and connections with mentors and experts in their area of research interest. For fellows whose focus is quality improvement and quality assessment rather than clinical research, we gladly connect them with mentors to nurture the fellow’s passion in this area.

The Transplant Hepatology fellowship offers a variety of high-yield didactic conferences which include:

Weekly liver transplant candidate selection conference
Weekly liver pathology conference
Weekly hepatobiliary-radiology conference (tumor board)
Weekly hepatology core curriculum conference
Weekly Gastroenterology and Hepatology Grand Rounds followed by clinical case conference
Monthly hepatology journal club

Manhal Izzy, MD, Program Director
Roman Perri, MD, Associate Program Director
Joseph Awad, MD
Sara Brown, MD
Hannah Kim, MD, MSCR
Shakirat Salvador, MD
Andrew Scanga, MD
Suzanne Sharpton, MD
Alexandra Shingina, MD, MSc
Ashley Spann, MD

The applicant must have completed an ACGME (Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education)-accredited gastroenterology training program.
Vanderbilt Transplant Hepatology program participates in the match system sponsored by the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD).
Our program can consider applicants who need visa sponsorship.

More information for applicants:

The Vanderbilt Office of Graduate Medical Education (GME) website offers detailed information about the tremendous resources available to support the house staff, their families, and their wellness.

Inquiries about our program are welcome and should be directed to:

Lisa Dunlop, C-TAGME

Program Coordinator for GI Fellowships
Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition
Department of Medicine

Phone: 615-322-4225

Fax: 615-343-6229

Email:  lisa.dunlop@vumc.org