Past President Highlights
Dean Andropoulos, MD, MHCM: “Serendipity”
By Lisa Wise-Faberowski, MD, MS, FAAP
Associate Professor, Medical Center Line
Pediatric Cardiac Anesthesia
Stanford University
Lucile Packard Children's Hospital
Dean Bradley Andropoulos, born at San Francisco Children’s Hospital, spent a good portion of his life in California. In fact, despite living in Houston for 21 years, he has remained a San Francisco Giants fan even after the Houston Astros won the World Series in 2017. His father was a Greek immigrant from Egypt and sold insurance and his mother was a secretary for the school district. His early years were spent in San Francisco, but from sixth grade through high school, he lived in a town in the East Bay, Concord. It was in eighth grade that he developed an interest in science and knew then, he wanted to be a physician.
During his undergraduate years at the University of California, Santa Barbara, he worked as an emergency medical assistant which solidified his career choice. He then completed his medical training at the University of California, San Diego in 1984. He matched into the pediatrics residency training program, with hopes of being a neonatologist, at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), in March of 1984. It was during a one-month elective in medical school, April 1984, that Dean was introduced to anesthesiology. During this serendipitous elective, he worked with Dr. Mick Austin, then an anesthesia resident at UC San Diego, and later an anesthesiologist at Oakland Children’s Hospital. Dr. Andropoulos describes this as being a life changing experience.
His second month of his pediatric residency training at UCSF was in the pediatric intensive care unit with none other than Drs. George Gregory, Dennis Fisher, and Claire Brett. His serendipitous encounter with these individuals, trained in both pediatrics and anesthesia, defined his career. He finished his pediatric residency training and accepted an anesthesia residency position outside of the match at UCSF. Throughout his pediatric and anesthesia training Dr. George Gregory continued to mentor him and has remained a life-long mentor for Dean.
After residency, he returned to Oakland Children’s Hospital to accept a position in anesthesia. It was during his seven years at Oakland Children’s Hospital where his interest in cardiac anesthesia was solidified. Again, through serendipity, Texas Children’s Hospital posted a position for an individual to start a dedicated pediatric cardiac anesthesia service. Dr. Andropoulos responded, had two visits three weeks apart and started two months later. It was at Texas Children’s that Dean would meet another life-long mentor, Dr. Burt Dunbar, the Chief of Pediatric Anesthesia. Burt Dunbar was a role model for Dean. He taught Dean how to establish and lead an academic department and how to advocate for the department through tough negotiations. In 1997, Dean became the Chief of Pediatric Cardiac Anesthesia; in 2004, he became the Chief of Pediatric Anesthesia, and in 2014, the Anesthesiologist-in-Chief at Texas Children’s.
A significant inspiration for Dean’s research focus was Dr. Bill Greeley’s early studies on cerebral physiology and metabolism during congenital cardiac surgery. Again serendipitously, while Anesthesiologist-in-Chief at CHOP, Dr. Greeley visited Texas Children’s Hospital twice, once as a Visiting Professor and the other as an outside reviewer. Bill Greeley was instrumental in helping Dean design and promote leadership and academic programs at Texas Children’s Hospital.
It was in 2004, upon the encouragement of Dr. Anthony Chang, then at Texas Children’s, that Dean began what is now known today as the Congenital Cardiac Anesthesia Society (CCAS) with a group of leaders from all around North America. CCAS grew initially out of the anesthesia component of the Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Society (PCICS), a group led by Dr. Anthony Chang and Dr. David Wessel. The CCAS Organizing Committee in 2004-05 consisted of Dean Andropoulos as Chair, Susan Nicolson from CHOP, Helen Holtby from Toronto SickKids, Jim DiNardo from Boston Children’s, George Hoffman from Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, Bruce Miller from Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, Chandra Ramamoorthy from Stanford, Emad Mossad from Cleveland Clinic, Shobha Malviya from CS Mott Children’s Hospital, and Gerald Bushman from Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Upon suggestion by Dr. Myron Yaster, the CCAS sought affiliation with the Society for Pediatric Anesthesia. The CCAS developed bylaws and later became an official society of the SPA in 2007.
Despite his many accomplishments and interest in too many things, he still enjoys a day in the pediatric cardiac operating room doing a difficult case that provides him the opportunity to teach a fellow, provide great clinical care, and of course, if research is involved, even better. His serendipitous encounters and mentors such as Drs. George Gregory and Burt Dunbar have solidified his commitment to the lives of children with congenital heart disease and to the education of the future generation of pediatric cardiac anesthesiologists. He says that among the most important things he has learned “is to make each daily encounter with a fellow, resident, medical student, or other learner a very positive experience, because one never knows when it could become a career-changing event".
