ASTS-Approved Multiorgan Transplantation Fellowship

Intestinal Rehabilitation and Transplant Program

The intestinal rehabilitation and transplant program at Mount Sinai is a component program of the transplant institute. It was founded as an interdisciplinary endeavor in 1997, incorporating the care of pediatric and adult patients under one integrated clinical team. Services offered in this program include the management of home parenteral nutrition, intestinal rehabilitation, remedial surgery, and intestinal transplantation. The program has become a national referral center for patients with a failing gastrointestinal tract, often suffering concomitant liver failure.

Dr. Rodriguez-Laiz has rejoined the Recanati/Miller Transplantation Institute after a four-year stay in his native Spain. Dr. Rodriguez-Laiz graduated from the University of Granada Medical School, in Granada, Spain. He moved to the United States for further training and did two years of Anatomical Pathology at UMDNJ in Newark, NJ, meeting AP requirements. Then he decided to pursue his career in General Surgery, joining the Surgical Residency Training Program at the same institution, where he became Instructor in Surgery in 1996, and Chief Resident in 1997. He was named Surgical Resident of the Year at Hackensack University Medical Center in 1997. After completing his Surgical Residency, he joined the Mount Sinai family entering the Abdominal Organ Transplantation Fellowship in 1998, where he was trained in the complex management of the transplant patient, including liver, kidney, pancreas and intestinal transplantation. During his training at Mount Sinai, he was bestowed the Physician of the Year Award in 1999.

After graduation from the program on June, 2000, he and his family went back to Spain. He established and headed for two years the Liver Surgery Unit at Salamanca University Hospital. He then moved to Barcelona, where he was a member of the Liver Transplant team at the Clinic Hospital for another two years. After four years from his departure, he decided to come back to Mount Sinai, joining full-time as Assistant Professor of Surgery in the summer of 2004. Dr. Rodriguez-Laiz's interests are in the field of adult and pediatric liver transplantation, intestinal transplantation, and multivisceral transplantation.

Dr. Thomas D. Schiano has a clinical background in hepatology, gastroenterology and clinical nutrition. He has expertise in the management of persons with cirrhosis and other acute/chronic liver diseases, and in caring for patients prior to and after liver transplantation. Dr. Schiano has varied clinical research interests including herbal treatments of liver disease, nutritional aspects of liver disease, recurrence of disease post liver transplantation, living donor liver transplantation, and management of the complications of cirrhosis. In addition, he is involved in the care of patients pre- and post-intestinal transplant.

Dr. Schiano is a UNOS-certified Liver Transplant physician, and is board certified in internal medicine, clinical nutrition, and gastroenterology.

Dr. Schiano is Medical Director of Adult Liver Transplantation and Director of Clinical Hepatology at the Recanati/Miller Transplantation Institute.

Fellows in the transplant program work alongside pediatric GI and hepatology fellows, and residents. In this endeavor, they master the management of short gut syndrome and parenteral nutrition, management of rare motility syndromes and secretory states in children, indications for and management of intestinal and multiorgan transplants, donor organ procurement and participate in all such transplants.