Profile image of Jean C. Emond, MD

Jean C. Emond, MD

Vice Chair, Department of Surgery
Program Director, Transplant & Hepatobiliary Surgery Fellowship
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Expertise:

Biliary Surgery
Cancer Care
General Surgery
Hepatobiliary Surgery
Immuno Suppression
Liver & Abdominal Transplant Surgery
Liver Cancer
Liver Resection Surgery
Liver Transplant, Pediatric
Liver Transplantation
Living Donor Transplantation
Management of Liver Transplant Complication
Pediatric Surgery
Portal Hypertension Surgery
Transplant Surgery
Vascular Reconstruction

About:

Dr. Emond is the Vice Chairman of Surgery at Columbia University. He has over 30 years of experience performing liver transplantation and complex liver and biliary surgery in children and adults, including the first living donor liver transplantation (LDLT) in the United States. Dr. Emond has published extensively in this field and was the co-chair of the NIH A2ALL program for 13 years. In collaboration with the department of Medicine at Columbia, Dr. Emond recruited the leadership of the Columbia Center for Translational immunology that created the foundation for translational and clinical research in transplantation tolerance. This will lead the way to inducing transplant tolerance in liver patients with the mixed chimerism strategy. As Director of Transplantation at the Columbia University Medical Center Dr. Emond’s activities foster clinical excellence and research across all 11 of the solid organ transplant programs at the Medical Center. In recognition of his national and international leadership in transplantation, Dr. Emond is the past president of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons, the pre-eminent association of a transplant surgery.

Contribution to Science

Living donor liver transplantation

Dr. Emond has spent a substantial portion of his career developing living donor liver transplantation and studying the safety of the procedure in both the donor and recipient. He participated in the first living donor liver transplant in the United States and focused on refining the techniques of performing living donor liver transplants and split liver transplants. He was the national co-chair of the NIH-sponsored Adult-to-Adult Living Donor Liver Transplantation (A2ALL) consortium from 2002 to 2015 to study the safety and outcomes of living donor liver transplants.

Hepatic resection/ischemia

Dr. Emond developed techniques for surgical resection of liver tumors and studied the effect of ischemia during resection on postoperative liver function. These studies include the outcomes of the extent of hepatectomy, the biochemical response to major hepatectomy and ischemia-reperfusion injury of the liver in rodent models. He has studied the clinical safety of inducing total vascular exclusion to provide a bloodless field during the liver transection. This has applications in both liver cancer and living donor hepatectomies.

Hepatocellular carcinoma treatment

Dr. Emond has studied many aspects of managing patients with hepatocellular carcinoma. These studies have included characterizing the risk factors for recurrence of disease following transplantation due to comorbidities and tumor characteristics. The research team has also studied the optimal method of preventing tumor growth in patients with HCC on the liver transplant wait list in addition to optimal strategies of liver allocation to optimize outcomes following liver transplantation. These studies have contributed to proposed changes in UNOS exception point allocation for liver transplant candidates with HCC.

Pediatric liver transplantation

Dr. Emond helped develop the field of pediatric liver transplantation. Contributions to this field include: the use of living donors for pediatric patients; use of auxiliary liver transplants for metabolic diseases; use of partial liver grafts for pediatric patients; and technical modifications that improved outcomes for this patient population.

Visit The Center for Liver Disease and Transplantation at columbiasurgery.org/liver

Honors:

New York Magazine Top Doctors, 2002~2020

America’s Top Doctors, 2001~2020

Top Doctors New York Metro Area, 2002~2020

America’s Top Doctors for Cancer, 2005~2020

Physician of the Year, American Liver Foundation, 2013

Physician Honoree, TRIO Manhattan, 2005

Doctor of the Year, Latino Organization for liver awareness, 2000

Ellis Island Medal of Honor, 2000

Named in The Best Doctors in America Woodward/White, Inc.

Honorary Faculty Member AOA

PEW Scholars Program-University of Chicago nominee

Andrew Mellon Young Faculty Member

Fulbright Travel Grant for International Study

French Government Post-Graduate Scholarship

Eleanor B. Pillsbury Fellowship

Ray and Joan Kroc Traveling Scholarship

Publications:

Carpenter DJ, Chiles MC, Verna EC, Halazun KJ, Emond JC, Ratner LE, Mohan S. Deceased brain dead donor liver transplantation and utilization in the United States: nighttime and weekend effects. Transplantation. 2018 Nov 15.

Samstein B, Griesemer A, Halazun K, Kato T, Guarrera JV, Cherqui D, Emond JC. Pure Laparoscopic Donor Hepatectomies: Ready for Widespread Adoption? Ann Surg.2018 Oct;268(4):602-609.

Halazun KJ, Tabrizian P, Najjar M, Florman S, Schwartz M, Michelassi F, Samstein B, Brown RS Jr, Emond JC, Busuttil RW, Agopian VG. Is it Time to Abandon the Milan Criteria?: Results of a Bicoastal US Collaboration to Redefine Hepatocellular Carcinoma Liver Transplantation Selection Policies. Ann Surg. 2018 Oct;268(4):690-699.

Halazun KJ, Emond JC. Re: The Pursuit of Happiness. The thin line between rights and duties. Am J Transplant. 2018 Jul;18(7):1828-1829.

American Society of Transplant Surgeons Executive Committee, Gaber O, Reed A, Pruett T, Emond J. Transplantation in value-based care for patients with renal failure. Am J Transplant. 2018 Aug;18(8):2094-2095.

Najjar M, Agrawal S, Emond JC, Halazun KJ. Pretreatment neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio: useful prognostic biomarker in hepatocellular carcinoma. J Hepatocell Carcinoma. 2018 Jan 18;5:17-28.

Elnaggar AS, Griesemer AD, Bentley-Hibbert S, Brown RS Jr, Martinez M, Lobritto SJ, Kato T, Emond JC. Liver atrophy and regeneration in noncirrhotic portal vein thrombosis: Effect of surgical shunts. Liver Transpl. 2018 Jul;24(7):881-887.

Przybyszewski EM, Verna EC, Lobritto SJ, Martinez M, Vittorio JM, Fox AN, Samstein B, Kato T, Griesemer AD, Emond JC. Durable Clinical and Immunologic Advantage of Living Donor Liver Transplantation in Children. Transplantation. 2018 Jun;102(6):953-960.

Chaudhry SG, Bentley-Hibbert S, Stern J, Lobritto S, Martinez M, Vittorio J, Halazun KJ, Lee HT, Emond J, Kato T, Samstein B, Griesemer A. Growth of liver allografts over time in pediatric transplant recipients. Pediatr Transplant. 2018 Mar;22(2).

Halazun KJ, Rana AA, Fortune B, Quillin RC 3rd, Verna EC, Samstein B, Guarrera JV, Kato T, Griesemer AD, Fox A, Brown RS Jr, Emond JC. No country for old livers? Examining and optimizing the utilization of elderly liver grafts. Am J Transplant. 2018 Mar;18 (3):669-678.

Baker TB, Zimmerman MA, Goodrich NP, Samstein B, Pomfret EA, Pomposelli JJ, Gillespie BW, Berg CL, Emond JC, Merion RM. Biliary reconstructive techniques and associated anatomic variants in adult living donor liver transplantations: The adult-to-adult living donor liver transplantation cohort study experience. Liver Transpl. 2017 Dec;23(12):1519-1530.

Halazun KJ, Quillin RC, Rosenblatt R, Bongu A, Griesemer AD, Kato T, SmithC,Michelassi F, Guarrera JV, Samstein B, Brown RS Jr, Emond JC. Expanding the Margins: High Volume Utilization of Marginal Liver Grafts Among >2000 Liver Transplants at a Single Institution. Ann Surg. 2017 Sep;266(3):441-449.