University of Vermont College of Medicine Dean Frederick C. Morin III, M.D., and University of Vermont Medical Group President and CEO Claude Deschamps, M.D., have announced the appointment of Mazen A. Maktabi, M.B.B.Ch., as chair of the Department of Anesthesiology and health care service chief of anesthesiology, effective August 1, 2016.

Maktabi will succeed David Adams, M.D., who has served as interim chair of anesthesiology since 2013. Adams will continue as a senior clinician-scholar in the department and as the founding chair of the UVM College of Medicine/UVM Medical Center Learning Environment and Professionalism Committee.

Currently an associate professor of anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School, Maktabi also serves as chief of the Division of General Surgery Anesthesia, which he established at Massachusetts General Hospital. In 2014, he also established the General Surgery Regional Anesthesia Service in the Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine at Mass General, which he co-directs[WCL1] . Prior to joining the Harvard faculty, he was director of the Division of Neuroanesthesia and associate director of the anesthesia residency program at the University of Iowa College of Medicine and University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, where he also held numerous elected collegiate and university governance positions.  

A fellowship-trained neuroanesthesiologist with special interest in base of the skull surgery and major spine surgery, Maktabi’s research focuses on the difficult airway in neuroanesthesia, postoperative vision loss, and informed consent by patients. He has performed laboratory studies on factors affecting cerebrospinal fluid production, clinical studies of airway compromise and difficult intubation in neurosurgical patients, and anesthesia-related cervical spine surgeries. While at the University of Iowa, he was the site principal investigator for the groundbreaking clinical trials IHAST2 (Intra-operative Hypothermia for Aneurysm Surgery Trial 2) and CFAAST (Cognitive Function after Aneurysm Surgery Trial). He is the author of more than 50 published articles and book chapters.

Maktabi earned his medical degree from Cairo University in Egypt and completed a residency in anesthesiology at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. He then came to the U.S. for a fellowship in neuroanesthesia at the University of Iowa, where he completed a second anesthesiology residency and a research fellowship in cerebrovascular and cerebrospinal fluid physiology, and then joined the faculty in 1988. He is an elected member of the Association of University Anesthesiologists, a member of the Society of Neurosciences in Anesthesia and Critical Care, and an active member and reviewer for the American Society of Anesthesiologists Closed Claims Project. He serves as a reviewer for several journals, including Anesthesiology, Anesthesia and Analgesia, the Journal of Clinical Anesthesia, and the European Journal of Anesthesiology, and has given invited lectures throughout the U.S. and internationally.