Message from the Director of Bariatrics

The past academic year has been full of success within our robotics and minimally invasive surgery program. Our bariatric program had a successful site survey this past June with no citations. Our robotic case volumes have been stable at 1082 cases for 2025, roughly equivalent to our 2024 numbers. I fully expect case numbers to continue to grow as our new hepatobiliary, colorectal, and endocrine surgeons continue to ramp up their robotic surgery volumes.

Several of our residents presented at state, regional, and national meetings this year. Robert Monfort presented our data on deep venous thrombosis prophylaxis after bariatric surgery at Southeastern Surgical Congress this past March as a Gold Medal Finalist. Alyse Ragauskas presented on robotic stapling in sleeve gastrectomy at the Georgia ACS meeting this year. She also had a video reel at SAGES this year of a robotic transgastric removal of an eroded gastric band as well as a video reel at the national ACS meeting on the use of ICG to detect an aberrant right hepatic duct during cholecystectomy.

Several of our residents will be pursuing fellowships in minimally invasive surgery. Oluwaseun Olusanya will be starting his MIS fellowship this coming August at Buffalo General Medical Center in Buffalo, NY. Alyse Ragauskus will be starting her fellowship as well this year at Saint Lukes Hospital in Kansas City, MO. Rob Monfort has accepted a fellowship position to start in August of 2027 at Florida State – Tallahasse Memorial Healthcare. It is notable to mention that the Florida State program is a new program started by two of our program alumni, Joey Jarrard and James Parker. Dr. Monfort will be their inaugural fellow. We wish Drs. Olusanya and Ragauskas the best of luck in their fellowships and with their career plans after fellowship.