Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center is an internationally recognized leader in research and clinical excellence that has given rise to breakthroughs in cardiovascular care, neuroscience, oncology, transplantation, and more. Our team’s efforts have led to the creation of many research programs and initiatives to develop advanced treatments found nowhere else in the world.

Our strong alliance with Baylor College of Medicine allows us to bring our patients a powerful network of care unlike any other. Our collaboration is focused on increasing access to care through a growing network of leading specialists and revolutionizing healthcare to save lives and improve the health of the communities we serve. 

Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center is also the first hospital in Texas and the Southwest designated a Magnet® hospital for Nursing Excellence by the American Nurses Credentialing Center, receiving the award five consecutive times.

A team of surgeons from Baylor College of Medicine is leading a free flap reconstructive surgery program at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center for patients with advanced-stage head and neck cancer.  

Free flap, or microvascular reconstructive surgery, is often required for patients with oral cavity, oropharynx, larynx, skin, and thyroid cancers. The surgery can be extensive and often life-altering, especially for individuals with advanced cancers and those whose cancer returns after being successfully treated with chemotherapy and radiation.

While chemo and radiation are effective, the treatment itself is grueling, intensive, and can leave burns on both the skin and neck as well as the inside of the patient’s throat. Should the patient’s cancer return, repeating radiation in the head and neck region is too risky, leaving surgery as the only option. 

In cases where the cancer has spread into the jaw, surgeons replace bone in the jaw with healthy fibular bone, muscle, and skin from the patient’s leg. Once the cancer is removed, surgeons use computer modeling to fashion an identical match from fibular bone and connect it to the blood supply in the neck which is able to restore both form and function.

Free flap reconstructive surgery is also significant because some patients may be able to receive radiation a second time in case the cancer returns since healthy tissue has now replaced the previously radiated tissue—a possibility that was unheard of in previous decades.

The Baylor team has a lower than 1% complication rate and reduced time of stay in the hospital for patients (five to seven days, as opposed to the standard average of 11-12 days). The team is building what is among the busiest head and neck reconstructive practices in the region.

The Baylor Medicine Spine Center at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center has adopted a multidisciplinary approach to patients with cervical spine disease who need surgery that has proven to better preserve two vital functions that are often taken for granted: speech and swallowing.

Spine surgeons typically work with physical medicine/rehabilitation specialists, neurologists, reconstructive surgeons, and pain management specialists. At Baylor Medicine, they also routinely collaborate with head and neck surgeon, Eddie Liou, M.D., F.A.C.S., to provide comprehensive care for patients undergoing anterior cervical discectomy, which can greatly affect a person’s ability to speak and to swallow.

Lying immediately anterior to the spine, the throat—consisting of the larynx, pharynx, and esophagus—is potentially at risk for temporary or permanent issues after spine surgery. Given that Dr. Liou’s surgical expertise as a head and neck surgeon is focused on preserving these anatomical structures, he has been able to improve voice and swallow outcomes for this patient group while decreasing operative times for these surgeries.

Additionally, through this collaboration between spine surgery and head and neck surgery, patients who might have once been regarded as poor candidates for an anterior cervical surgery due to complex medical histories (such as previous head and neck irradiation, previous thyroid/parathyroid surgery, or neck dissection, and patients with extended levels of disease) may now benefit from this direct approach.

Head and neck surgeons as well as radiation oncologists and medical oncologists at Baylor College of Medicine are using a highly sensitive blood test that measures circulating tumor DNA and is superior to surgical methods in diagnosing and monitoring patients with throat cancers caused by human papillomavirus (HPV).

Baylor is one of the only institutions in Southeast Texas to offer the NavDx blood test (developed by biotechnology company Naveris) to help evaluate oropharyngeal cancers of the throat, especially those of the tonsils and base of the tongue (known medically as the oropharynx) and pinpoint the origin of cancers initially showing up in lymph nodes of the neck.

The NAVDx blood test circumvents unnecessary trips to the operating room for biopsies of the throat. After the cancer is treated with either surgery or radiation or in combination with chemotherapy, it is sometimes difficult to determine if the cancer is fully eradicated. The NavDx blood test is used to monitor patients post-treatment as it allows a highly sensitive method to show that there are no cancer cells remaining by demonstrating no tumor-specific DNA is found in the blood.

Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center reconstructive surgeons Dr. Andrew Huang, Dr. David Hernandez, and Dr. Angela Haskins are leading a microvascular (free flap) reconstructive surgery program focused on patients with advanced stage of head and neck cancer—matching or exceeding the science at academic centers in the United States.  

Free flap reconstructive surgery is a complex procedure where skin, muscle, or even bone are transplanted to the head and neck (tongue, jaw, skin, voicebox) in order to repair deformities caused by the removal of a patient’s cancer. This surgery is important in ensuring patients optimize their cosmetic and functional outcomes. These reconstructive procedures also allow some patients to be able to receive another round of radiation if their cancer returns since the healthy tissue has replaced sometimes previously radiated tissue.  

For the past seven years, our head and neck reconstructive team at Baylor St. Luke's has performed over 700 of these surgeries with a complication rate of less than one percent and is leading the way in defining and improving quality metrics where they have decreased postoperative length of stay by an average of six to nine days compared to national inpatient data.

Nasal allergies, a common diagnosis, can significantly impact a person’s quality of life. Often there is a  potential to exacerbate asthma and chronic rhinosinusitis, high direct health care costs, and loss of productivity and concentration leading to missed days from school or work.  

Treatment options usually include avoiding triggering allergens, medications, and allergen-specific immunotherapy (allergy shots or allergy drops), and while each therapy option is successful, it depends on the patient’s commitment to therapy for three to five years.  

Dr. Meha Fox and her team are taking a mixed-methods approach to discover why some patients follow through with allergen-specific immunotherapy and why others don’t. 

“This study is unique because it creates a more patient-driven interview. We want the patient to drive the conversation, rather than using a directed interview format or multiple-choice questions on a  survey,” says Dr. Fox. “This allows patients to share their experience in their own words.” 

"Mixed-methods studies like these are important because they can help to determine the ‘why’ of the challenges we face as providers and as patients, rather than simply defining the scope of an issue,”  says Dr. Fox.

 Dr. Meha Fox

Since 2015, our ear and hearing team of surgeons (Dr. Alex Sweeney and Dr. Angela Peng), audiologists, and rehabilitation specialists across different disciplines have worked diligently to address a patient’s hearing issues head-on. Our goal is to find the most appropriate technology to address a specific patient’s hearing loss.  

“With so many different types of hearing loss, it is important that we tailor our approach to each individual patient,” says Dr. Alex Sweeney. “Some patients are best treated with a hearing aid, while others are better suited for a surgery that implants a hearing device such as a cochlear implant or bone conduction implant. Our team is committed to finding the best option for each patient.” 

Hearing loss is a health condition that can have devastating medical and social consequences. Growing evidence is linking hearing loss to cognitive decline, and patients with hearing loss can often find themselves isolated from friends and family when they are unable to hear well enough to communicate. Given that the United States has a growing number of people who are at risk for hearing loss, finding a solution to this problem is critical.  

Our hearing implantation practice at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center and Baylor College of Medicine has grown significantly over the past seven years, and we are proud to be one of the only institutions in our region that allows patients to work with all three of the FDA-approved cochlear implant manufacturers: Cochlear Americas, MED-EL GmbH and Advanced Bionics; and a variety of different bone conduction implant manufacturers: Cochlear Americas, MED-EL GmbH and Oticon Medical. We also have a research team that studies hearing loss so that we can help define the best methods to care for patients with this disease.  

“Hearing health is incredibly important, and we have the expertise and experience to be a part of the solution for our patients in need,” says Dr. Angela Peng.  

From Neurosurgery to ENT/Neurotology and Radiation Oncology, our providers within Baylor St. Luke's and Baylor College of Medicine combine their expertise to work together to care for patients with skull base diseases from Texas and around the world.  

Our skulls are filled with a large number of tunnels and spaces that allow blood vessels and nerves to travel to and from the brain. Unfortunately, this area of the body can be injured by infections and tumors, and the consequences can be devastating.  

"This is an area of medicine and surgery where teamwork is essential," says Dr. Alex Sweeney, one of the skull base surgeons at Baylor St. Luke's and Baylor College of Medicine. "We are incredibly fortunate to have a robust team and a team of incredibly talented surgeons, clinicians and therapists."  

Our skull base team sees various skull base diseases, ranging from infections to tumors (schwannomas, meningiomas, epidermoids, metastases, sarcomas and cholesterol granulomas, among others).  

"We look at each person individually, discuss treatment options, that include surgery, radiosurgery, novel chemotherapies or observation, as a team to come up with a customized plan for each patient.” says Dr. Akash Patel, Director of the Baylor College of Medicine Brain Tumor Program. "Our team also has a robust research program that focuses on understanding the best way to care for patients with skull base diseases and the genetics responsible for developing skull base tumors."

The TRINTY clinical trial, led by physician Dr. Erich Sturgis, is screening men between the ages of 50-64 with no history of throat cancer to determine early screening methods that will help identify HPV-related throat cancers before requiring treatment.  

Human papillomavirus (HPV)-related oropharyngeal (throat cancer) is rising in the United States—it has surpassed cervical cancer as the leading HPV-related cancer in the country.  

“A routine early detection test for HPV-related oropharyngeal cancer, or at least a biomarker to identify those at high risk, could revolutionize our specialty and disrupt worrisome trends in cancer incidence and mortality, as well as the devastating effects of cancer treatment on this growing population,” said Dr. Sturgis.  

More than 80% of oropharyngeal cancer patients have metastatic cancer by the time they are diagnosed and require advanced treatment. Early detection can potentially reduce treatment toxicity and improve the chances of achieving a cure. 

Throat and Other HPV-Related Cancers in Men: Identifying Them Early (TRINITY Study)

   Erich M. Sturgis, MD, MPH