YingWei Lum, MD

Dr. Black is an expert in the care of patients with aortic aneurysms. Dr. Black and the Vascular Team at Hopkins take pride in the fact their techniques and results have been published in the flagship journals in the field of Vascular Surgery. Our peer reviewed results demonstrate a record of safety and operative outcomes that is unrivaled regionally and nationally. Indeed, no other vascular program in the Baltimore, District of Colombia, or the Mid-Atlantic region, has accumulated and demonstrated a similar experience in the care of patients with aortic aneurysms. Dr. Black has been invited to lecture his colleagues, both across the nation and worldwide, on his techniques to manage and repair aneurysms in the abdomen (AAA), thoracic aneurysms (TAA) and thoracoabdominal aortic aneurysms (TAAA). Dr. Black has unique experience with management of aortic dissection and genetically inherited conditions that may predispose patients to aortic aneurysm and dissection such as Marfan Syndrome, Loeys-Dietz Syndrome, Vascular Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, and Familial Thoracic Aneurysm and Dissection Syndrome. His experience in this regard has many important implications for all patients with aneurysms, and through these insights, he advocates for his patients to invoke many non-surgical approaches therapies that can reduce the future risk of aneurysm events and thus improves the length and quality of his patients' life.Dr. Black is the most experienced surgeon in the mid-Atlantic Region with both traditional surgical, and more recently complex endovascular repairs using the FDA approved fenestrated endovascular devices. Additionally, he is one of the few surgeons nationwide who has FDA approval for next generation devices that may be suitable for patients with all types of aneurysms that involve the chest and abdomen (TAAA). Dr. Black also collaborates with surgeons in the fields of neurosurgery, surgical oncology and urology to provide vascular reconstructions of all territories in the body to allow cure from cancerous tumors. Many patients are often unfairly denied a chance at cure for fear of involvement of nearby vessels. Dr. Black and colleagues have published their results for reconstruction of veins and nearby arteries for pancreatic cancer and renal cell carcinoma cure.Dr. Black joined the surgical faculty of the Johns Hopkins Hospital in 2004. He completed his General Vascular Surgery Fellowship in the Division of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital and received his General Surgery Training in the Halsted General Surgery Training Program at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Dr. Black maintains an active practice in all aspects of vascular surgery. In addition to his interest with open surgical reconstruction of complex aortic disease, he aggressively pursues the application of minimally invasive endovascular technologies for patients with occlusive disease of the carotid, renal, mesenteric, and lower extremity arteries.His research interests include the cellular and molecular events underpinning the development of aortic catastrophe in both atherosclerotic and connective tissue disorders, as well as diagnosis of aortic dissection and malperfusion syndromes. He has also devised protocols that make surgery safer at Hopkins and these have been shared nationwide for the betterment of the field.

Dr. Hicks specializes in congenital aortic pathologies including aberrant subclavian arteries and aortic coarctation, thoracic and abdominal aortic aneurysms, complex lower extremity revascularization including lower extremity bypasses and stenting, and carotid endarterectomy. She is skilled in both open and endovascular surgery for the treatment of aortic and peripheral disease. She is also accomplished in clinical research with over 130 peer-reviewed publications and numerous textbook chapters; her research interests include clinical outcomes in aneurysm repair and lower extremity revascularization, as well as high-value care in vascular surgery.A distinguished fellow of the American Board of Surgery, Dr. Hicks is the recipient of the Department of Surgery Rothman Early Career Development Award for Surgical Research and was selected as a Visiting Scholar to the American Board of Medical Specialties for 2018-2019. She is also an appointed member of a CMS Clinical Expert Subcommittee tasked with refining peripheral vascular disease cost measures for implementation in the Quality Payment Program.

Dr. Shiv Saidha specializes in the diagnosis, management, and treatment of multiple sclerosis (MS), as well as other neuroimmunological disorders of the central nervous system, including those afflicting the brain, spinal cord, and optic nerves. Dr. Saidha received his medical degree, as well as his postgraduate Doctor of Medicine, from the National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG), Ireland. He completed residency training in general internal medicine at Galway University Hospitals, Ireland. Subsequent to this he completed residency training in neurology at Galway, Cork, and Beaumont (located in Dublin) University Hospitals, Ireland. He then completed a further three years of specialized fellowship training in neuroimmunology & neuroinfectious diseases at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland.Dr. Saidha’s research interests to date have predominantly focused on the non-invasive interrogation of retinal structures using optical coherence tomography (OCT) in multiple sclerosis (MS), in order to identify and investigate novel outcome strategies for assessing and monitoring neuroprotection and neurorestoration in MS, as well as to further our understanding of the pathobiology of MS, including how retinal pathology in MS may be related to more global central nervous system disturbances. He has been at the fore of discovering and demonstrating that inner and outer retinal layer pathology occur within the unmyelinated retina in MS (both quantitatively and qualitatively). He is committed to continuing to delineate and ascertain the mechanisms involved in the development of these findings, the clinical relevance of these changes (both locally in the retina, as well as more globally), and determine if this information may be used to guide the development of new, and potentially unique/novel effective MS therapies. His work to date has been primarily structurally focused (both within the retina using OCT, as well as more globally within the central nervous system through the assessment of brain substructure volumes, diffusion tensor imaging & magnetization transfer ratio metrics within specific pathways in MS). He also has expertise in the functional assessment of the anterior visual pathway in MS through the application of multifocal electroretinography and pupillometry techniques amongst others. He has published first author papers in Lancet, Lancet Neurology, Brain, Neurology, JAMA neurology, Archives of Neurology and Multiple Sclerosis Journal amongst authors.