I am excited to announce that I have now started a new adventure in my career, joining the UCLA Department of Head and Neck Surgery. I have been fortunate to train and then work at outstanding places with such talented people. This move will be no different, as the UCLA team has consistently been one of the top departments in the nation. I look forward to developing their sleep surgery presence while partnering with one of the largest academic sleep medicine groups in the country, incorporating renowned experts from pulmonary, neurology, and psychiatry/psychotherapy backgrounds.

The move will allow me to do two things:

• Focus more of my clinical work on patients with obstructive sleep apnea who cannot tolerate positive airway pressure therapy. At USC, I ordered and managed many patients with positive airway pressure, as we were a smaller group of providers. With such a large team at UCLA that treats patients across the full spectrum of sleep disorders, the sleep medicine team will likely be starting and then managing patients with positive airway pressure without needing my involvement. At the same time, given that the sleep medicine team sees so many patients with sleep apnea, the law of averages suggests that there will be many patients who cannot tolerate positive airway pressure, such that many patients will need a sleep surgery evaluation.
• Conduct sleep surgery research more effectively. This focus on sleep surgery will translate into more sleep surgery and a greater ability to perform clinical studies. The clearest example relates to a 4-5 year research study that I will start soon (more details to come in a future blog post). The study involves drug-induced sleep endoscopy to select good candidates for soft palate surgery, performing the soft palate surgery, with specific medications to treat patients who do not do well with surgery. The collaboration with such a large team will allow me to complete this work and continue scientific investigation beyond this.

Please feel free to reach out to me if you would like to schedule an appointment, whether with me or one of my outstanding colleagues.