Dr. Can Yerebakan Named Nationwide Children’s Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery

(COLUMBUS, Ohio) - Nationwide Children's Hospital has named Can Yerebakan, MD, PhD, as the chief of the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery effective this month.

"It is a tremendous honor to lead the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Nationwide Children's. I am grateful to Dr. (Mark) Galantowicz for his leadership, mentorship and the extraordinary program he has built, and I look forward to building on that foundation together with our outstanding cardiology team," said , MD, PhD, chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery.

Upon joining Nationwide Children's in 2024, Dr. Yerebakan stepped into the position of associate chief of the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery and director of the Congenital CT Surgery Fellowship.

"As we have all experienced over these past two years since Dr. Yerebakan joined us, he is a remarkably thoughtful, skilled and forward-thinking congenital heart surgeon who embraces our Heart Center multidisciplinary culture fully," said Mark Galantowicz, MD, co-director of The Heart Center. "During this time in his role as director of the Congenital Heart Surgery Fellowship, he has recruited excellent surgeons from around the world who are not only augmenting our clinical program but also being very academically productive."

Prior to joining Nationwide Children's and the Abigail Wexner Research Institute, Dr. Yerebakan was the associate chief of Cardiovascular Surgery at Children's National Hospital in Washington, D.C., and a professor of surgery and pediatrics at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. Dr. Yerebakan has contributed to more than 170 peer-reviewed publications in journals, and more than 200 presentations in three different languages worldwide. He is an active scientific reviewer and serves on the editorial boards of several high-impact journals. He is an active member of several professional organizations, including the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, the Society of Thoracic Surgeons, AATS Congenital Scholarship Committee, the European Association of Cardiothoracic Surgery, and the German Society for Cardiothoracic and Vascular Surgery. Dr. Yerebakan is principal investigator at the Abigail Wexner Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital. His research primarily focuses on the fetal development of single ventricle congenital heart disease.

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