Our providers: Children’s Heart Center growth, leadership attract Dr. Mohammed Ghanamah
Published on Monday, April 22, 2019
By: Annie Oeth, aoeth@umc.edu
Working with a mentor in a children’s heart program that’s moving into a state-of-the-art children’s hospital expansion presented an opportunity Dr. Mohammed Ghanamah said he was excited to take.
Ghanamah, who joined the Children’s Heart Center at Batson Children’s Hospital in February, specializes in surgeries to treat congenital heart disease in children and adults. He also is an assistant professor of pediatric and congenital heart surgery at UMMC.
“Since I arrived, I have felt the warmth of the welcome of everyone here,” Ghanamah said. “People here work as a team, and they are making such a difference in the lives of children and their families.”
Batson Children’s Hospital is the only place in the state where pediatric heart surgery is performed. Children’s of Mississippi physicians and surgeons have a record that rivals the nation’s leading children’s heart programs. During the past year, the Norwood, the most complex congenital heart operation, was successfully performed eight times at UMMC, resulting in a 100 percent survival rate.
After earning his medical degree at the University of Jordan in Amman, Ghanamah was an internal medicine and surgery resident at the Cleveland Clinic and a research fellow at Johns Hopkins University. After a surgical residency at Methodist Hospital in Houston and a fellowship in cardiothoracic surgery at the University of Iowa, he was a congenital cardiac surgery fellow at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, a part of Washington University, and later at the Emory University School of Medicine’s Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.
At Emory, Ghanamah trained with Dr. Brian Kogon, who joined Children’s of Mississippi in 2017 as chief of pediatric cardiothoracic surgery.
“Dr. Kogon suggested I take a look at the program in Mississippi,” Ghanamah said. “I enjoyed working with him very much in Atlanta, so working with him again was one of the first things that motivated me to come to Mississippi.”
What sealed the deal, though, was the work being done at the Children’s Heart Center, the care team there and the seven-story pediatric expansion now under construction at UMMC.
“I wanted to come to a place where we could make a significant impact on the lives of children,” Ghanamah said. “Children’s of Mississippi is that place.”
Kogon said Ghanamah is a welcome addition to the Children’s Heart Center team.
“Dr. Ghanamah trained under me at Emory and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta’s Congenital Heart Center of Georgia, one of the largest and most comprehensive congenital heart surgery programs in the country,” Kogon said. “He is an excellent surgeon and can perform the entire spectrum of congenital heart surgery.”
Ghanamah said he was drawn to children’s heart surgery as a specialty because of the difference it can make in a child’s life.
“These children, after surgery, are able to lead full, healthy lives,” he said. “To be able to help children reach their full potential, sometimes through only one surgical procedure, is awesome.”