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Jennifer S. Nelson, M.D., left, with STSA President Richard Prager, M.D.

A study by Jennifer S. Nelson, M.D., of outcomes of children who had the Ross Procedure for aortic valve replacement received the Congenital Heart Surgery President’s Award during the annual meeting of the Southern Thoracic Surgical Association, Nov. 5-8, 2014, in Tucson, AZ.

The paper, “Long-term outcomes after the Ross Procedure in children vary by age at operation,” was the result of the largest single-center study of the Ross operation in children to date and was done in collaboration with the University of Michigan’s Congenital Heart Center. The study described outcomes in children ranging from newborns to 18-year-olds. The manuscript is expected to be published in the Annals of Thoracic Surgery in 2015. In the Ross Procedure, a patient’s diseased aortic valve is replaced with the patient’s own pulmonary valve; the pulmonary valve is then replaced with a donor valve.

The STSA Congenital Heart Surgery President’s Award was established in 2013 to recognize the best congenital surgery scientific paper delivered at the STSA annual meeting. The award is given on the basis of originality, content and presentation.

Dr. Nelson is an assistant professor in the UNC Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery and co-director of the UNC ECMO program. She specializes in congenital cardiac surgery and is a founder of the UNC Children’s Heart Collaborative, a multidisciplinary research group that focuses on congenital heart disease.