Depippo Patrick MD

Douglas Held, MD is a board-certified general and colon and rectal surgeon specializing in hernia surgery and was accredited in 2020 by the Surgical Review Corporation (SRC) as a Surgeon of Excellence in hernia surgery. Dr. Held's relationship with Northwell Health dates back to when he was just a young child, when his uncle served as chairman of anesthesiology at Long Island Jewish Medical Center when it first opened in 1953. After seeing several surgeries performed, he knew it was something he would eventually do, and later in his teenage years he became an operating room tech at the same hospital. After attending medical school at SUNY Health Science Center at Brooklyn, Dr. Held completed both his internship and residency at Long Island Jewish Medical Center. He completed his fellowship training in colorectal surgery at Allentown Hospital-Lehigh Valley Center. As his focus turned more and more to hernias, a common problem for both men and women, Dr. Held recognized that the treatments are not a one-size-fits-all approach. "Different technologies allow us to provide different ways to help each individual person," he says. And Dr. Held is at the forefront of these technologies. As the section director of hernia surgery at LIJ Medical Center, Dr. Held works closely with new innovations in hernia care and is heavily involved in the robotic hernia center at LIJ Valley Stream, which achieved dual accreditations from the SRC as a Center of Excellence in both hernia surgery and robotic surgery. Averaging about 900 cases a year for the better part of three decades, Dr. Held has seen a lot over his career and has become very sensitive to patient feedback and observation. "You sort of develop a sixth sense," he says, and he has become acutely attuned to what works and doesn't work in each individual case. With his expertise in high demand, Dr. Held also works to pass on his knowledge to the next generation of surgeons, training medical students as part of the Initial Clinical Experience (ICE) program at the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell. With such a longstanding career, its this opportunity to act as mentor that keeps him coming back for more.