Hesham Atwa

Hesham Atwa, M.D., FACS, FASMBS, DABS-FPMBS, founded Long Island Laparoscopic Doctors and serves there as medical director, senior surgeon, and director and chief of surgery. He is also chief of surgery and director of robotic surgery at St. Charles Hospital in Port Jefferson, where he leads the medical staff as president, and chief of surgery at St. Catherine of Siena Medical Center in Smithtown. He previously served as director of surgery at Mather Hospital, Northwell Health. He is a proctor for Intuitive Corporation, the maker of the da Vinci system, and trains other surgeons in its use. He began practicing in the Port Jefferson area in 2001 and was the first fellowship-trained laparoscopic surgeon at that community hospital.

He has more than 20 years in advanced laparoscopic, robotic and general surgery, including hernia and bariatric work. The site reports that he has performed over 13,000 procedures, assisted on 6,000 and carried out more than 2,500 robotic surgeries, and that he performs over 250 hernia operations each year.

His medical school training was at Ain Shams University School of Medicine in Cairo, Egypt, followed by an internship and residency at the University of Illinois in Chicago. He completed a minimally invasive fellowship in advanced laparoscopic surgery under Dr. Phillip L. Leggett at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston, and a fellowship in laparoscopic and bariatric surgery at the University of Texas and Cleveland Clinic Hospital. He is board certified in general surgery by the American Board of Surgery, holds its Focused Practice Designation for Bariatric Surgery, and holds Master Hernia Surgeon and Master Robotic Surgeon designations from the Surgical Review Corporation. He is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons and of the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery.

His specialties are robotic-assisted bariatric and general surgery, and minimally invasive and robotic hernia repair for inguinal, umbilical, ventral, incisional, hiatal and complex recurrent hernias. According to the site, he is one of Long Island's most experienced robotic surgeons, and it lists Top Surgeon and Most Compassionate Doctor awards for 2011 to 2017, a Theodore Roosevelt award in 2018 from John T. Mather and St. Charles Hospitals, and a Resident Achievement Award from the Society of Laparoscopic Surgeons. He co-wrote an article on advanced surgical procedures accepted for publication in the Journal of Surgical Endoscopy, wrote a chapter on robotic hernia repair in a surgical textbook, and wrote a book listed on the practice's website.