uf department of surgery
Acute Care Surgery
When something unexpected happens and you need help immediately, the department of surgery’s acute care surgeons and the UF Health Shands Emergency Room offer exceptional care. Our surgeons work on multidisciplinary teams at the UF Health Shands Burn Center and the UF Health Shands Trauma Center to provide timely, expert care to patients with severe injuries and surgical emergencies.
UF Health Shands Hospital is a Level 1 trauma center and tertiary surgical referral center serving injured and critically ill surgical patients from north and central Florida, as well as southern Georgia. UF Health Shands Trauma Center is unique in that it is one of only a few Level 1 trauma centers in the United States with a fully operational hybrid operating room dedicated exclusively to trauma and acute surgical emergencies. The hybrid operating room allows for a timely, multidisciplinary approach for trauma/acute care surgeons, vascular surgeons and interventional radiologists to simultaneously utilize a full range of open, endovascular and minimally invasive interventions for injuries and hemorrhage control. In addition to offering emergency surgical services, UF Health has 120 combined critical care beds. In collaboration with the surgical services, the acute care surgeons and critical care teams manage 3,500 critically ill patients each year across trauma surgery, burn surgery, emergency general surgery, surgical oncology, pancreas-biliary surgery, bariatric surgery, neurosurgery, orthopedics, obstetrics and gynecology, vascular surgery, otolaryngology, urology, plastic surgery and transplantation surgery.
The acute care surgery team at UF Health consists of surgeons who treat burns and specialize in trauma surgery, emergency general surgery and surgical critical care. UF Health acute care surgeons provide comprehensive care of severely injured trauma patients and patients with surgical emergencies, including their evaluation in the emergency department, the operative management of acute surgical issues, and their subsequent supportive care in the intensive care unit.
UF Health acute care surgeons provide and care for:
- Abdominal wall hernias
- Acute cholecystitis
- Acute respiratory distress syndrome
- Appendicitis
- Burns
- Critical care surgery
- Emergency airway procedures
- Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation
- Gastrointestinal fistula
- Intestinal obstruction
- Necrotizing soft tissue infection
- Rib fractures
- Sepsis
- Traumatic injury
- Wound care