Cleveland Combined Hand Fellowship

The ACGME-accredited Cleveland Combined Hand Fellowship was created over 25 years ago. This one-year fellowship is a joint venture of two longstanding Cleveland institutions: Cleveland Clinic and MetroHealth Medical Center and typically accepts 2-3 fellows per year. Both teaching sites are dynamic academic centers, dedicated to education, research and patient care. Metro Health Medical Center is a Class I trauma center and Cleveland Clinic is an international referral center. Through these two institutions, there is large and varied clinical exposure.

Fellows spend six months at each of the two institutions, working with both orthopaedic and plastic surgeons. They are free to move between institutions during their six month sessions in order to participate in rare or particularly interesting cases or conferences. There is elective time for research, other elbow/hand rotations, or shoulder with world-renowned shoulder surgeons.

Fellow on-call schedule is at a Junior Staff Level with in-house resident support and faculty supervision. The program provides exposure to all aspects of hand and upper extremity surgery, including arthritis, tumor, congenital deformities, microsurgery and trauma reconstruction. Fellows participate in a one-week microvascular laboratory course and have laboratory availability to maintain their skills. There are ample opportunities for anatomical dissection laboratory research. With protected-time, Fellows complete either a clinical or laboratory project by the end of the fellowship year.

Starting in 2013, we have been selected by the American Society for Surgery of the Hand to host a two-year hand fellowship. The make-up of the second year can be tailored to the fellow's interests, but at the Cleveland Combined Hand Fellowship, we feel that our strength would be shoulder and elbow training. An example of a possible two-year rotation is:

The rotations listed as Hand are fully integrated Upper Extremity experiences as can be seen by the clinical focus of the faculty as seen above.

Shoulder Faculty: While we have 11 surgeons that perform shoulder surgery at Cleveland Clinic and two surgeons at MetroHealth Medical Center, for the shoulder portion of the fellowship we would only include our three shoulder-only surgeons (Drs. Brems, Iannotti, Ricchetti), two of our sports medicine surgeons with significan arthroplasty experience (Drs. Miniaci and Schickendantz) and two of the hand faculty (Drs. Evans and Seitz). The fellow would also participate in complex tendon transfers or neuromuscular restoration stimulation at MetroHealth Medical Center.

• John Brems, MD: elective arthroscopic decompression, open rotator cuff repair and instability, arthroplasy
• Peter J. Evans, MD, PhD: elective arthroscopic/open rotator cuff repair and instability, tendon transfer, complex arthroplasty
• Joseph P. Iannotti, MD, PhD: elective arthroscopic/open rotator cuff repair and instability, tendon transfer, complex arthroplasty
• Anthony Miniaci, MD: elective arthroscopic/open rotator cuff repair and instability, tendon transfer, complex arthroplasty
• Eric Ricchetti, MD: elective arthroscopic/open rotator cuff repair and instability, complex arthroplasty
• William Seitz, Jr., MD: elective arthroscopic/open rotator cuff repair and instability, complex arthroplasty
• Mark S. Schickendantz, MD: elective arthroscopic/open rotator cuff repair and instability, primary arthroplasty

If you have any questions or need more information regarding the fellowship, please contact us. We appreciate your interest in our fellowship program and look forward to receiving your application.

Sincerely,

Peter J. Evans, MD, PhD, FRCSC
Fellowship Program Director
Director, Hand & Upper Extremity Center

Application Process

Selection of fellows is via application. Applicants must have a MD or DO degree from an appropriately accredited US or Canadian medical school or must have graduated from an international school and possess valid ECFMG certification.

Applicants must complete the Universal Hand Surgery Fellowship Application. Please note that your application is NOT considered complete until all 4 letters of recommendation are received, your CV listing publications/presentations and medical school transcript. Your letters of recommendation should include a letter from a hand surgeon as well as a letter from the director of your residency program. Pending review of your application packet, you will be notified regarding a potential interview sometime in January. The Cleveland Combined Hand Fellowship participates in the Match program.