MUSC Health General Surgery at Rutledge Tower

Cynthia Talley, M.D., FACS is an acute care surgeon at MUSC Health who specializes in trauma surgery, emergency general surgery, and surgical critical care. Dr. Talley is highly trained and has extensive knowledge of surgical procedures and how to manage different types of injuries. Dr. Talley's philosophy is to deliver compassionate care to patients with acute illness and injury and their families. Fellowship-trained in acute care surgery, Dr. Talley is board certified in general surgery and surgical critical care and has clinical expertise in treating injuries from trauma and providing quality ICU care. Her particular niche is ultrasound-guided bedside procedures and ICU care. Dr. Talley serves many leadership roles both at MUSC and within professional medical and surgical organizations. Dr. Talley is vice chair of education for the MUSC Department of Surgery, where she developed our future surgical leaders program. Outside the walls of MUSC, she serves on the Board of Directors for the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma (EAST), is president-elect of the SC chapter of the American College of Surgeons (ACS), and chair of the Member Service Committee of the Young Fellows Association (YFA) of the ACS. In addition, Dr. Talley trains EMS, nurses, and the community regarding trauma and disaster medicine. Dr. Talley is fellowship-trained in acute care surgery from Vanderbilt University. She completed her surgical residency at the University of Tennessee Graduate School of Medicine and her medical degree from the University of Tennessee School of Medicine. Prior to joining MUSC, she was a trauma surgeon at the University of Kentucky.

Dr. Stuart Leon is a fellowship-trained trauma and critical care surgeon in Charleston, South Carolina. He serves MUSC as the Medical Director of the Surgical / Trauma Intensive Care Unit, specializing in the care of patients in need of emergency surgery. In addition, he treats patients in non-emergent situations for hernia repair and gall bladder surgery. His patient care philosophy is to involve his patients in the decision making process of their treatment options to provide the best possible outcome. Recognized for clinical excellence, Dr. Leon was awarded the MUSC Foundation Outstanding Clinician Award in 2019 and the College of Medicine Faculty Excellence Award - Clinical Years Honorable Mention in 2018. He serves on many leadership committees both at MUSC, including the Major Trauma Committee, Emergency Services Subcommittee of the Critical Care Committee, and the ICU Quality Committee. He is a member of numerous national organizations, including the American College of Surgeons, Association for Academic Surgery, Southeastern Surgical Congress, and the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma. Dr. Leon received his fellowship training in both Trauma and Critical Care from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. He received his medical degree from the Guthrie Clinic at the Robert Packer Hospital in Sayre, Pennsylvania.

Dr. Mike M. Mallah is a double-board certified fellowship-trained trauma and acute care surgeon in Charleston, South Carolina. He specializes in the care of both critically ill patients and patients with traumatic injuries. Dr. Mallah has extensive knowledge of how to manage complex injuries and delivers compassionate care to help his trauma patients through their journey of recovery. Dr. Mallah is also a general surgeon experienced in minimally invasive procedures to treat patients with hernias and other complex general surgery issues. Dr. Mallah has as a strong interest in global surgery and surgical education and serves MUSC as the Director of the Global Surgery Program. He has operated on five continents and traveled to over 55 countries. Not only did this work expose him to pathology and surgical technique not often seen or practiced in the United States, but it also allowed him to gain an understanding about barriers and lack of access to safe surgical and anesthesia care. He has published articles in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the General Surgery News, and presented at several regional, national, and international conferences, including chapters of the American College of Surgeons and the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma. Dr. Mallah earned an undergraduate degree in Biology with a Chemistry minor and his medical degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He then completed General Surgery Residency at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, NC and a Trauma/Surgical Critical Care fellowship at Virginia Commonwealth University's Level I Trauma Center in Richmond, VA. Dr. Mallah has certification and course training in Robotic Surgery, Advanced Burn Life Support, Advanced Surgical Skills for Exposure in Trauma, Advanced Trauma Life Support, Advanced Cardiac Life Support, Pediatric Advanced Life Support, Advanced Trauma Operative Management, Disaster Management and Emergency Preparedness.

Dr. Alicia Privette is a fellowship-trained trauma and acute care surgeon in Charleston, South Carolina. She specializes in the care of both critically ill patients and patients with traumatic injuries. She has extensive knowledge of how to manage complex injuries and delivers compassionate care to help her trauma patients through their journey of recovery. Dr. Privette is also a general surgeon experienced in minimally invasive procedures to treat patients with hernias and other complex general surgery issues. She is recognized as a leader in trauma care. She is a member of both the Western Trauma Association (WTA) and the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma (EAST). In addition, Dr. Privette is a Fellow in the American College of Surgeons. When not treating patients, Dr. Privette serves the Medical University of South Carolina as the Surgical Critical Care Fellowship Program Director. She is also an instructor in Advanced Trauma Life Support Training, and mentors surgical residents on trauma/critical care issues and fellowship opportunities.Her research focuses on various aspects of trauma and critical care, including improving patient care coordination through the development of a smart phone application to streamline communication and teamwork during trauma care. She also participates in multicenter research studies through her affiliation with various surgical societies. Dr. Privette received her medical degree from the University of Utah. She completed her general surgery residency at the University of Vermont and attended the University of California San Francisco for her fellowship training in trauma and critical care.

Dr. Ashley Hink is a general, trauma and critical care surgeon that specializes in the care of people with injuries, burns and critical illness. She also cares for general surgical problems including hernias and gallbladder diseases. She values providing the highest quality, evidence-based surgical and medical care to all her patients. She also values providing compassionate care, and having open communication with patients and their families so they can feel empowered to make informed decisions in their health care. She enjoys providing medical and surgical care for a diverse patient population and making all patients feel welcomed and cared for. Dr. Hink attended medical school at the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University, completed her general surgery residency at the Medical University of South Carolina, and obtained a Master of Public Health Degree at Emory. She attended the University of Washington in Seattle, WA to complete her Trauma and Surgical Critical Care fellowship at Harborview Medical Center. This busy, level I trauma center provided extra training in trauma and surgical critical care, and she obtained additional experience in managing soft tissue infections, penetrating trauma, burns, respiratory and heart failure requiring ECMO (temporary lung and heart bypass), pediatric critical care and palliative care for individuals with severe illness and injury. She now cares for patients at MUSC, which is home to the only American College of Surgeons Verified Level I trauma center in the low-country region of SC. In addition to her clinical interests and surgical practice, she has a special research interest in injury and violence prevention, and recovery after trauma. She serves on the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma (ACS COT) Injury Prevention Committee, working on research and advocacy efforts that aim to reduce violent injuries and suicides. Her work has been published in scientific journals, and she has won awards for her leadership in surgery and humanism in medicine.

Brittany Bankhead, M.D., recently joined the Department of Surgery as an associate professor. Dr. Bankhead is a double-board certified trauma and general surgeon and a surgical intensivist. Before joining MUSC, she was an assistant professor of surgery at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (TTUHSC). This fall, she was awarded the President's Innovation Award at TTUHSC and the prestigious "40 under 40" award by the Association of Women Surgeons. During her time as the Stop the Bleed State Champion of Texas for the Committee on Trauma, she saw a need for improved hemorrhage control training. She built a multidisciplinary regional team that was accepted into the National Science Foundation's Innovation Corps (NSF I-Corps), an immersive, entrepreneurial training program. During this prestigious program, Dr. Bankhead's team shifted their focus for commercialization from solely local injury prevention to also include improved military biofeedback hemorrhage control training. Dr. Bankhead's team received regional and national funding, including a $50,000 grant for the NSF iCorps award. She most recently was selected, among a large national cohort, to present her medical technology in Washington, DC, at a multidisciplinary innovation conference with large military and federal influence. This has given her the ability to continue to work towards her future goals of large-scale NIH federal innovation funding and commercialization with a military focus. Dr. Bankhead is looking forward to multidisciplinary collaboration and helping grow the network of research and commercialization opportunities at MUSC. During the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Bankhead was part of the inaugural international group "CovidSurg" through the National Institute for Health Research Unit on Global Surgery in the United Kingdom. Her experiences and insights from the frontline were shared in multiple national outlets, including The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, and the New Yorker. Dr. Bankhead is passionate about ensuring healthcare workers feel an open door to discussing hardships \& trials concomitantly with their pursuit of excellent patient care. She served as a panelist at the inaugural "Surgeons as Second Victims" lecture at the American College of Surgeons annual meeting and helped create the roundtable "Finding Comfort in Discomfort... Reflecting on Stories Told" at the 2022 American Association for Academic Surgery presidential session. She is equally passionate about ensuring females feel an open door to starting and maintaining a productive career in surgery. Dr. Bankhead's leadership extends beyond her clinical practice. She currently is currently the vice chair of the Associate Membership Committee of the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma; she assumes the role of chair in September. She also serves on the Editorial Board for Trauma and Acute Care Surgery Open and Impact Surgery.

Dr. Bruce Crookes grew up in northern New Jersey in the New York metropolitan area. He graduated with a degree in biophysics from the University of Michigan. He then attended the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, graduating in 1996. He then completed a residency in general surgery at Abington Memorial Hospital in Pennsylvania, where he fell in love with trauma and critical care. Dr. Crookes then attended the prestigious Ryder Trauma Center at the University of Miami, where he completed a trauma and critical care fellowship. Upon completion of his fellowship, Dr. Crookes joined the faculty at the University of Vermont College of Medicine and rose to the position of trauma medical director. In 2009, he joined the faculty at the Medical University of South Carolina in the same role. To date, he continues to be a busy intensivist, trauma surgeon, and general surgeon. He is recognized nationally as a leader in the care of the injured and is the former president of the nation's largest academic trauma society -- the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma. Clinically, Dr. Crookes has a myriad of interests, including hernias, complex abdominal wall reconstruction, robotic and minimally invasive surgery (particularly for hernia repair), pulmonary embolisms and venous thromboembolic disease, the surgical treatment of rib fractures, and complex general surgery.

Dr. Heather Evans is a Professor of Surgery and Vice Chair of Veterans Affairs in the Department of Surgery. She serves as the Chief of Surgery at the Ralph H Johnson Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Dr. Evans is a general surgeon who specializes in minimally invasive hernia (rupture) surgery. She has performed laparoscopic inguinal hernia repairs (TEP) since 2009 and now routinely performs robotic-assisted laparoscopic repairs for groin, umbilical and ventral hernias. Dr. Evans' practice includes the care of patients with ventral and incisional hernias that can develop after open abdominal surgery. One of only two surgeons in the Charleston area offering robotic-assisted abdominal wall reconstruction, Dr. Evans also performs open ventral hernia repairs, choosing the best approach based on prior surgery, the size of the hernia, and other conditions. She coaches patients on pre-operative conditioning in order to prepare them for the surgery and its recovery. In some cases, she advises patients on how to manage hernias without surgery. Each patient has their own story, and she considers the unique risks and needs of each person who comes to her clinic. Last year, she was featured on an episode of the Advance with MUSC Health podcast to [discuss the different considerations of hernia surgery for women](https://advance.muschealth.org/library/2022/march/women-and-minimally-invasive-hernia). Dr. Evans' practice also includes the care of patients with ventral and incisional hernias that can develop after open abdominal surgery. She coaches patients on pre-operative conditioning in order to prepare them for the surgery and its recovery. Dr. Evans offers both open and robotic-assisted ventral hernia repairs, choosing the best approach based on prior surgery, the size of the hernia, and other conditions. In some cases, she advises patients on how to manage hernias without surgery. Each patient has their own story, and she considers the unique risks and needs of each person who comes to her clinic. The COVID-19 pandemic brings new challenges to, but also new opportunities for the care of surgical patients. Dr. Evans is pleased to offer both new patient consultations and post-surgical visits via telemedicine, providing convenience and additional clinic capacity. The South Carolina Telehealth Alliance recently featured a story about her adoption of video visits ([Seeing a doctor without leaving home gets a lot more popular during pandemic](https://web.musc.edu/about/news-center/2020/10/22/seeing-a-doctor-without-leaving-home-gets-a-whole-lot-more-popular-during-pandemic)). If you are interested in whether remote pre-operative visits are right for you, please contact Dr. Evans' office for more information. Dr. Evans earned her medical degree at the University of Rochester in Rochester, NY. She completed a general surgery residency at the University of Virginia and a fellowship in trauma and surgical critical care at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle WA, where she worked for 10 years prior to coming to MUSC. In addition to her elective surgery practice, Dr. Evans cares for trauma and surgical emergencies and provides surgical critical care at MUSC's level 1 trauma center in downtown Charleston. In addition to her clinical practice, Dr. Evans has worked with patients, nurses, doctors, and other researchers to create mobile health solutions to improve the care of surgical site infections ([www.mpowercare.org](https://www.mpowercare.org/)). Dr. Evans' work has been featured on National Public Radio, in the Seattle Times, the Bulletin of the American College of Surgeons, as well as on iHeart Radio and Al Jazeera America. With a grant from the CDC, she studied how patients use their own mobile phones to help surgeons detect and monitor post-operative wound infections. She partnered with MUSC Center for Telehealth on a new remote wound monitoring program for surgical patients, building on the successful MUSC remote patient monitoring system for people with COVID-19.