Leaders in Plastic Surgery
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Addition of New Faculty under Dr. Grabb’s Leadership
Between 1976 and 1982, seven of the new alumni of the UM training program were asked to stay on as new faculty members.
Dr. Dennis Bucko stayed on in Ann Arbor after he finished his residency in 1976 at the UM. He was appointed instructor in plastic surgery with a 50 percent appointment (Photo 34). He saw his private patients at Dr. Dingman’s office. This was right around the time that Dr. Dingman retired as section head. Bill Grabb had moved his office from the Ingalls Street location to the university hospital as he was in transition to becoming permanent head of the section. Dr. Bucko was appointed to the medical staff at SJMH, and his private patients were hospitalized there. Right after he finished his training, he spent two to three weeks in New York City with Byron Smith and his oculoplastic team. He also spent some time with Dr. John M. Converse. When he returned to Ann Arbor, he started evaluating oculoplastic patients in the plastic surgery clinic at the university hospital and assumed teaching assignments with ophthalmology residents. This fit well with Dr. Grabb’s idea that the faculty should each try to gain special expertise in some aspect of plastic surgery.
Dennis was following a family with more than one child who had congenital absence of upper eyelid levator muscles. He treated them surgically with silicon slings to replace the levator function. He also covered the pediatric residents at Mott Hospital and did quite a bit of hand surgery and general plastic surgery in private practice at SJMH. Dennis made significant contributions in teaching the residents many aspects of plastic surgery and nerve grafting in primates in the lab (see p. 64 for details). We were all sorry to see Dennis leave Ann Arbor in 1981 to start a private practice in southern California. He was well liked and had made significant contributions to the teaching program.
Dr. M. Haskell (Hack) Newman finished his two years of plastic surgery training at the UM in 1977 (Photo 35). Hack’s previous training included completing an otolaryngology residency in 1968 at UM with a master of science degree in acoustic physiology. After a tour in the army, he joined the faculty at the UM and became an assistant professor in the Department of Otolaryngology until 1975. Just prior to starting his plastic surgery residency, he completed a fellowship in facial plastic surgery with Dr. Richard Webster in Boston. Then for the first six months after completing his training in plastic surgery in June of 1977, he took a craniofacial (CF) fellowship in Toronto, Canada, with Dr. Ian Munro. When he returned to Ann Arbor, Hack assumed a full-time academic position as assistant professor in plastic surgery and established an office on Clark Road near SJMH, where he became a member of the medical staff and hospitalized his private patients. He was active in teaching residents at the UM and passed on much important information to all of us, both faculty and residents, about rhinoplasty and other aesthetic procedures that he had learned in his previous ENT career and from his time with Dr. Webster. He also was the primary staff member at the Ann Arbor Veterans Administration (VA) Hospital (part of the university hospital system) for resident training during that time. In 1981, he shifted his responsibilities to half-time at the university and moved his office to the Reichert Health Building, attached to SJMH. He continued covering the resident service at the VA Hospital and the pediatric service at Mott Hospital. Returning from Toronto, he was able to get the CF program underway together with neurosurgery (see pp. 117–9). He was aided by Dr. Eddie Kahn, previous head of neurosurgery, who was still active clinically. Together with Dr. Louis Argenta, the two were able to expand the CF service to both adults and children.
Dr. Louis Mes stayed on the faculty as an instructor for a year after completing the residency in 1977 (Photo 36). This is the story of how that came about in Dr. Mes’s own words:
I wanted to go back to South Africa (SA) and for that matter my J1 visa demanded it, but there was a technical glitch with the SA licensing board over my title during my spell in Scotland and they wanted three more months of accredited training on my CV before I could practice in SA. Getting a residency in SA to do just three months was almost impossible and they wanted me to re-do my whole residency in SA. This was ridiculous, so Bill Grabb created a job for me at the “U” and I stayed on for a year as a clinical instructor to solve the problem.
This is a good example of Bill’s generosity in helping his residents and the trust the residents had in Bill. Continuing in Dr. Mes’s words,
I had been doing a research project on manipulating cell metabolism with steroids and allopurinol to improve graft and flap survival, and was able to complete the work during that year. The Department of Surgery awarded me the Coller Prize for original research at the annual Senior Residents meeting for my paper, and it was later published in PRS. My job as clinical instructor involved staffing the residents at Jackson Prison and most of it was done with Paul Dempsey and later with Eric Austad. The experience we all received working there stands me in great stead, even today.[12]
Dr. Paul H. Izenberg completed the UM residency in 1978 and joined John Markley and me in our practice at the Tower Plaza (Photo 37). Paul had many other opportunities to practice but really wanted to stay in Ann Arbor. Thus, he followed Dr. Dingman’s remembered admonition, “Don’t stay here just because you are afraid to go somewhere else.”[13] He was appointed to the faculty as an instructor in plastic surgery. There will always appear some stresses and strains when a new faculty member joins a program, especially in a small group as we were then. However, they were short-lived. Paul rapidly became a welcome and essential addition to the program because of his surgical skills, artistic talent, and creative ability to innovate. It is interesting and gratifying to see how much collegiality quickly developed and was maintained among the faculty then and in subsequent years. I believe that these feelings of respect and friendship greatly enhanced the success of the residency program overall.
Dr. Eric D. Austad also finished his residency in 1978 (Photo 38). Following this, he received a half-time appointment as clinical instructor at UM and continued his work on skin expansion in the Sargent plastic surgery laboratory. He also provided faculty coverage for plastic residents on clinical rotation to Jackson Prison for 1½ years. During that period, he was also on staff at Henry Ford plastic surgery service. In 1981, he started practice at Chelsea Hospital and began consulting about specific head and neck nerves associated with intractable headache problems in collaboration with Dr. Saper and others in their neurology group who specialized in headache management. In 1983, he joined Hack Newman in practice at SJMH with an office in the Reichert Health Building and continued his teaching and research in skin expansion as clinical assistant professor.
Dr. Louis C. Argenta (Lou) finished his plastic surgery training in 1979 (Photo 39).He was only the third resident in the program who, prior to plastic surgery residency, had completed a full general surgery residency at UM. All the others were in the 3 and 3 program or had prior training at other institutions. He then went to Paris for several months to study with Dr. Paul Tessier, a world famous CF surgeon. He returned to UM as assistant professor and took on many teaching responsibilities. After Dr. Grabb’s death, Lou, as a very essential member of the faculty, took over many important administrative responsibilities. Clinically, in addition to other duties, he helped Hack Newman further develop the CF program.
Dr. Malcolm Marks was a resident from 1980 to 1982, and after four months of travel at the end of his residency, he spent a year in the Sargent laboratory working with Dr. Mike Morykwas (Photo 40). He spent that year researching the effect of mechanical deformation of soft tissues, particularly blood flow using radioactive microspheres and tissue oxygen level in response to skin expansion. His activities on the faculty when he returned are discussed in the Epilogue (p. 146).
