Ram Anantha, BSc (Hons), MD, MSc, FRCSC

About

Ram Anantha completed his medical school training at the University of Ottawa. He subsequently moved to London, Ontario to complete his General Surgery residency at the University of Western Ontario in 2016. During this time, Dr. Anantha also completed a graduate degree in Microbiology and Immunology as part of the Royal College of Surgeons of Canada Clinician Investigator Program (CIP). He then completed his fellowship training in Surgical Critical Care, Trauma, and Acute Care Surgery at the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He has been practicing as a trauma and general surgeon at the Royal Alexandra Hospital, University of Alberta, since August 2018.

His clinical interests revolve around complex abdominal wall reconstruction, as well as quality improvement in trauma and acute care surgery. Dr. Anantha currently directs the Complex Hernia and Abdominal Reconstruction Group of Edmonton (CHARGE), Canada’s first multi-disciplinary complex hernia program that provides comprehensive care for patients with complex abdominal wall hernias in Northern Alberta, parts of Saskatchewan, and Northwest Territories.

Dr. Anantha is currently appointed as a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Surgery within the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Alberta.

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Research

Dr. Anantha is part of the Edmonton Zone Trauma and Acute Care Collaborative (EZ-TRACC), a city-wide group of trauma and acute care surgeons dedicated to improving clinical care through research.

Dr. Anantha’s primary research revolves around quality improvement and patient-centered outcomes that revolve around complex abdominal wall hernias. Additionally, his research focuses on the use of machine learning algorithms in large data sets, such as the Northern Alberta trauma registry: the focus of this work is to identify discrete sub-populations of trauma patients who would benefit from targeted interventions in order to improve clinical outcomes. As a direct result of this research, and in partnership with the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Dr. Anantha and the trauma group at the Royal Alexandra Hospital created a Traumatic Brain Injury clinic to address the neuro-cognitive needs of injured patients with mild to moderate brain injury. Additional projects stemming from this big data analysis include the Blunt Chest Trauma Incentive Spirometry protocol, Geospatial Analysis of Rural Trauma Patients Transferred to Edmonton, and Examination of Venous Thromboembolism Rates in Trauma and Surgical Patients. Further projects include the Correlation of Socioeconomic Status and Frailty among Geriatric Trauma Patients, as well as an examination of the Incidence of Violent Trauma within Urban Centres During the COVID19 Pandemic. These projects have won awards and recognition at local, regional, national, and international conferences.

Dr. Anantha has also co-supervised undergraduate students in the Department of Computing Science with trauma-related projects in machine learning. He currently supervises medical students and residents on a variety of trauma and hernia-related research projects.

Lai K, Anantha RV, Fawcett V, Tsang B, Kim M, Widder S.

Trauma. 2021 January;

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Eksteen A, O’Dochartaigh D, Odenbach J, Douma MJ, O’Neill K, Anantha R, Bradley NL, Gauri A, Widder S

Can J Emerg Med. 2020 December; 23

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Anantha RV, Painter MD, Diaz-Garelli F, Nunn AM, Miller PR 3rd, Chang MC, Jason Hoth J.

Am Surg. 2020 October; https://doi.org/10.1177/0003134820951450

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Jiang HY, MacLean A, Yoon J, Hughes S, Kim MJ, Anantha RV, Widder SL; Edmonton Zone Trauma and Acute Care Collaborative (EZ-TRACC)

Can J Surg. 2020 August; 63 (5):E383-E390