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Henry C. Hsia, MD, FACS

Professor of Surgery (Plastics)
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Additional Titles

Founding Director, Yale Regenerative Wound Healing Center

Contact Info

Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery

PO Box 208062

New Haven, CT 06520-8062

United States

About

Titles

Professor of Surgery (Plastics)

Founding Director, Yale Regenerative Wound Healing Center

Biography

Dr. Henry Hsia is a Board Certified Plastic Surgeon at Yale School of Medicine who has dedicated his professional life to finding innovative wound treatments for patients through basic and clinical research. Graduating magna cum laude from Harvard University, Dr. Hsia received a scholarship to study at Cambridge University (Trinity College) in England before returning to the US to pursue his medical degree at Yale University, where he also completed an American Heart Association Research Fellowship. He then went on to complete his surgical residency at Yale-New Haven Hospital before receiving his certification from the American Board of Plastic Surgery and admission as a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons.

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Dr. Hsia's clinical training at Yale provided a strong foundation to understand how the body responds to injury from illness and trauma as well as firsthand knowledge of the limitations of current therapies for treating difficult wounds and the great challenges in developing novel treatments that can be widely adopted by practitioners. In order to gain a deeper understanding of the fundamental biological processes underlying wound healing, Dr. Hsia upon completing his surgical training became a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University where he was funded by the National Institutes of Health. He subsequently became a member of the surgical faculty at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, NJ, where he practiced for several years performing plastic and reconstructive surgery, in addition to teaching and training surgical residents and medical students as well as running a funded research laboratory that focused on issues related to wound healing and regenerative healing.

Dr. Hsia is credentialed at Yale-New Haven Hospital and the West Haven campus of the VA Connecticut Healthcare System and is leading ongoing collaborative efforts by the Yale-New Haven Health System and Yale School of Medicine in conjunction with the VA Connecticut Healthcare System to develop an expanded program in wound care and regenerative healing.

Appointments

Other Departments & Organizations

Education & Training

Postdoctoral Fellow
Princeton University (2005)
Resident
Yale-New Haven Hospital (2002)
Resident
Yale-New Haven Hospital (1999)
MD
Yale University School of Medicine (1996)
BA
Harvard University, Biology & Anthropology (1990)

Research

Overview

As a board-certified plastic surgeon in active clinical practice, I have dedicated my professional life to finding innovative wound treatments for patients through basic and clinical research. My clinical training at Yale had given me a strong foundation to understand wound healing. I also acquired firsthand knowledge of the limitations of current therapies for treating difficult wounds and the great challenges in developing novel treatments that can be widely adopted by practitioners. I came to the conclusion during my clinical training that if I wished to make significant contributions to therapeutic advances for these challenging clinical entities, it would require a much deeper understanding on my part of the basic biological processes underlying wound healing. Through an NIH-funded postdoctoral position at Princeton University, I studied the role of the extracellular matrix in regulating wound cell behavior, work which led to a successful application for NIH funding in the form of a K08 career development award. Accordingly, I have developed an intellectual and professional background that is uniquely well rounded among my clinical and scientific colleagues and find myself poised to bridge the widening translational gap between the basic and clinical sciences. As the Director of the Yale Regenerative Wound Healing Center, I have developed the clinical wound program at Yale-New Haven Hospital into the foremost regional referral center for challenging chronic wounds using innovative approaches to achieve dramatic clinical outcomes. This clinical program is paired with a scientific program that encourages cross-disciplinary collaborations and has already yielded key insights on the role of macrophages in regulating fibroblast heterogeneity (Shook et al., Science, 2018) that I hope to one day will lead to the development of novel approaches in regenerative medicine. My lab's goal is also to attract trainees that will benefit from direct exposure to such approaches, and as a consequence, allow them deeper insights to answer questions relevant to the “bedside” as well as the “bench.”

Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)

Acellular Dermis; Aging; Biomedical Engineering; Cells, Cultured; Fibrosis; Foot Ulcer; Leg Ulcer; Negative-Pressure Wound Therapy; Pressure Ulcer; Regenerative Medicine; Surgery, Plastic; Surgical Wound; Surgical Wound Dehiscence; Telemedicine; Tissue Engineering; Tissue Scaffolds; Wound Closure Techniques; Wound Healing; Wounds and Injuries

Research at a Glance

Yale Co-Authors

Frequent collaborators of Henry C. Hsia's published research.

Publications

2024

2023

2020

2019

Academic Achievements & Community Involvement

  • activity

    Plastic Surgery Education Network

  • honor

    Elected to Fellowship

  • activity

    Plastic Surgery Foundation

  • honor

    Young Investigator Travel Award

  • honor

    Elected to Fellowship

Clinical Care

Overview

Henry Hsia, MD, is a plastic surgeon and the founding director of the Yale Medicine Regenerative Wound Healing Program. He focuses on the treatment of all wounds, regardless of etiology, patient age, or location on the body.

He has a particular interest in wounds that don’t heal easily. “Wound care is unique in that it involves living tissue, and there is no suturing technique, medication, or ointment that is guaranteed to heal it,” Dr. Hsia says. “So, I try to think about the circumstances that might be promoting or hindering its healing. When a patient says that a wound has been there for three months and won’t heal, I ask questions that might give me clues—are they eating well, are they a smoker, are they a diabetic and, if so, is the diabetes well controlled?”

As a professor of surgery & biomedical engineering at Yale University, Dr. Hsia focuses his research on how wound care can be optimized not only through the better understanding of the social determinants underlying chronic wounds, but also through molecular and cellular research that may lead to novel approaches and interventions for challenging wounds. “I’m trying to correlate characteristics of patients’ skin and wounds with their clinical healing to find patterns that we can use to devise better wound care treatments,” he says.

Dr. Hsia chose plastic surgery as his specialty because he found it to be especially creative. No two patients are alike and no two problems are identical, he says. “The wounds can be anywhere on the body from the scalp down to the toes,” he adds. “But, whatever the problem, you can reduce my job down to a single phrase: quality of life. We want to help the patient move on, whether it was from a car accident or a cancer operation, and I find that very appealing.”

Clinical Specialties

Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery; Regenerative Wound Healing Surgery

Fact Sheets

Board Certifications

  • Plastic Surgery

    Certification Organization
    AB of Plastic Surgery
    Original Certification Date
    2006

Yale Medicine News

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Contacts

Appointment Number
Mailing Address

Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery

PO Box 208062

New Haven, CT 06520-8062

United States

Administrative Support

Locations

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