Henry C. Hsia, MD, FACS
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About
Titles
Professor of Surgery (Plastics)
Founding Director, Yale Regenerative Wound Healing CenterBiography
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.
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
Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery
ProfessorPrimary
Other Departments & Organizations
- Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery
- Regenerative Wound Healing Surgery Program
- Surgery
- Yale Cancer Center
- Yale Medicine
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
Academic Achievements and Community Involvement
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
Fact Sheets
Keloids
Learn More on Yale MedicineFrostbite
Learn More on Yale MedicineLymphedema
Learn More on Yale MedicineSurgery for Cleft Lip and Palate
Learn More on Yale Medicine
Board Certifications
Plastic Surgery
- Certification Organization
- AB of Plastic Surgery
- Original Certification Date
- 2006
Yale Medicine News
Links & Media
Media
Immunostained cells on flat and rolled scaffolds respectively.
Immunostained cells on flat and rolled scaffolds respectively.
News
- June 23, 2021
Meet Dr. Henry Hsia
- December 05, 2018
Veterans prefer telehealth consults for plastic surgery, study shows
- March 27, 2017Source: Yale Medicine
Do breast implants raise your risk of getting a rare cancer?
- April 23, 2015
Yale School of Medicine Department of Surgery welcomes Dr. Hsia:
Get In Touch
Contacts
Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery
PO Box 208062
New Haven, CT 06520-8062
United States
Locations
Patient Care Locations
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