CLEVELAND, Ohio — Cleveland Clinic urologist Dr. Inderbir Gill will leave this month to become chairman of the Department of Urology in the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California.
Gill’s final day at the Clinic is Feb. 28. When he arrives at USC, he also will be director of its new Institute of Urology and serve as an associate dean for clinical innovation at Keck.
Gill was the chairman of urology at Cleveland Clinic and the director of the Center for Laparoscopic and Robotic Surgery. He’s known for his work both in robotic surgery and renal cryoablation.
Recently, he’d been training other Clinic physicians on single-port kidney removal and other types of nephrectomies. The Clinic had become a leader in the single-port procedure, and Gill was one of the physicians who regularly performed the surgery.
“He is arguably the most experienced laparoscopic/robotic surgeon in the United States,” Keck School Dean Carmen A. Puliafito said when announcing the appointment last year.
Dr. Jihad Kaouk will replace Gill as the director of the Center for Laparoscopic and Robotic Surgery.
“Dr. Kaouk and his team will continue the history of surgical innovation that the Glickman Urological and Kidney Institute is known for nationally and internationally, providing patients state of the art care and advancing the field,” said Dr. Eric Klein, chairman of the institute.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
At USC, Gill will be charged (pdf) with expanding the school’s urology residency program and creating the Institute of Urology to include advanced robotic and laparoscopic surgery, female and pediatric urology, and kidney transplants, among other things.
[Cover photo courtesy of Flickr user Lightmatter]
