Robert Riviello
About Robert Riviello
Robert Riviello, MD, MPH, through his teaching, research and clinical activities, hopes to improve access to surgical services for poor African patients by bridging academic general surgery with teaching hospitals in sub-Saharan Africa and thereby improving the quality and quantity of available surgical workforce. He is developing, through the BWH Department of Surgery and the BWH Center for Surgery and Public Health, a Global Surgery Delivery track to provide structured mentorship to such residents. He also leads an Academic Global Surgery Forum which offers group mentorship to medical and public health students and surgical residents in this budding field. Dr. Riviello has a secondary focus investigating innovative low-cost wound care technology to impact the global burden of chronic wounds. Working in collaboration with MIT engineers, CSPH, and the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT), his research team has developed a prototype of a simplified Negative Pressure Wound Therapy (sNPWT) device. He believes that by mentoring and training future North American leaders in the nascent academic field of global surgery and by linking this to training surgical providers in Africa, substantial advances in delivery of surgical care can be achieved.
Role(s) / Profession(s)
- Academic
- Physician
Organization
- Brigham And Women's Hospital - BWH
- Center for Surgery and Public Health - BWH
- Partners In Health - PIH
Work Location(s)
- United States
Robert's Communities
Language(s)
- English
- Portuguese
- Spanish
Recent Contributions
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Robert Riviello replied to "Negative pressure devices for wound care" in the Global Surgery & Anesthesia community.
An important question. Certainly using salt solutions (normal saline) to moisten gauze to make a wet-to-dry dressing for an open wound that is changed a couple times daily is standard-of-care probably in most resource-poor settings. Raw (unboiled) honey can be a helpful agent. There are good animal studies and decent human studies that honey is helpful in disinfecting dirty wounds, and in increasing wound healing. The proposed mechanism is its energy-producing properties, its hygroscopic effect ...
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Robert Riviello replied to "Haiti" in the Global Surgery & Anesthesia community.
Nadine, great point about the ongoing surgical need. While the acute phase is over, the subacute and chronic phases will require their own share of surigcal services. Now in the subacute phase, external fixators will need to be removed. Malunions and nonunions will need to be addressed. Chronic osteomyelitis as a result of open fractures, non-sterile fixations, and early closures of wounds will drainage, debridement, sequestrectomies. And these are purely the orthopedic needs. They high ...
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Robert Riviello replied to "SIGN Disaster Relief Handbook" in the Global Surgery & Anesthesia community.
Myles, thank you for directing the community to the important work of the SIGN program. They really are a fantastic group. And this approach really does seem to be the best answer currently to the problem Myles brings up in an earlier commentary - that problem being that the WHO GIEESC standard for long bone fracture management is traction, which requires weeks of hospital-based care, leads to debility from immobility, and hence delayed return to ...
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Robert Riviello replied to "TB Pulmonary surgery: protocol or indications for different procedures?" in the Global Surgery & Anesthesia community.
I would add another indication for resection from my own clinical experience in Angola: cavitary pulmonary TB, that has been treated, is smear-negative, but has recurrent hemoptysis. A resection of the involved lobe was performed with no further bouts of hemoptysis to our knowledge. Of course, long-term follow up is difficult in this setting. I guess the take away point here is that surgical intervention in TB has a role for the treatment of the ...
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Robert Riviello replied to "Essential Surgery: Integral to the Right to Health" in the Global Surgery & Anesthesia community.
Nadine, Thank you for posting the article. I think you are absolutely right that "amputations" should be included in the Table 1 list of Priority 1 procedures under the Trauma section. Clearly the Haiti earthquake experience highlights thousands of times over the importance of the procedure as a life saving measure in the care of trauma patients. It's very telling, this article was largely written, edited, and revised prior to the Earthquake, and we missed ...
Recent Recommendations
- None at this time.