If you had asked Walter Merrill, MD, just a couple of years ago whether his career might take him to Mississippi, you'd have received a doubtful answer.

 

"It really wasn't on the radar screen," he admits, just a few weeks after joining the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMC) as chief of cardiothoracic surgery and co-director of University Heart.

 

What brought him south from Cincinnati was the appeal of working on what one might call a "growth and development" project — joining the vision of UMC leaders in expanding the quality and range of cardiovascular services. "The medical center seems to be a wonderful place that's really trying to transform itself in lots of good and positive ways," he said.

 

"One of their major goals is to transform the way cardiovascular care is delivered here. They asked me to come and be a part of that whole process, and it sounded like a challenging project."

 

That process, he said, has been ongoing with the recent addition of several established cardiologists to the UMC heart-care program. As the expertise and patient base each one brings to the program spills over into the need for more surgical care, Merrill is also working to recruit additional surgeons to the medical center's staff.

 

In addition to boosting clinical care, improving UMC's training program in cardiothoracic surgery is a corresponding goal, as is further development of its research programs.

 

"We want to develop additional research activities here to allow us to participate in the discovery of new information that will lead to future improvements in healthcare," he said.

 

Since joining UMC in March, Merrill has been settling into roles similar to those he performed at the University of Cincinnati. There, he was chief of the section of cardiothoracic surgery and a professor of surgery from 2002 until this year. Earlier, he spent more than 20 years at Vanderbilt University as professor of cardiac and thoracic surgery.

 

His first weeks on the job in Jackson were largely spent getting to know his new staff and colleagues, including meeting with potential referring physicians around the central Mississippi area.

 

"We hope to partner and collaborate with people from all over the state," Merrill said. "We hope to offer some special services that are not available in other areas, and we hope people will think of UMC as the place of choice to send patients who have extraordinary problems or require extraordinary care to address their problems."

 

Merrill himself brings to the table a special expertise in heart transplant, heart failure and cardiac valve repair.

 

Among the new services he'll be introducing, alongside current and future colleagues, is the left ventricular assist device program. Essentially, it would provide an interim treatment for those patients who need a heart transplant but may not have time to wait for one.

 

"One has the option to insert a pump device to support circulation, and give the patient more time to either improve or wind up getting a transplant," Merrill said. "The idea is to provide new technology that we don't currently have available to the citizens of the state. That's just one example of a new service we're trying to implement."

 

For Merrill, the nature of cardiothoracic surgery continues to provide both professional challenge and personal reward.

 

"Frequently, people come to us with a difficult problem that has major implications for their survival and well-being," he said. "To me, it's a really unique and remarkable privilege to be able to intersect with people at a critical juncture in their lives."

 

Additionally, the aspect of skill and challenge is one that has only grown over his years of practice, as increasing options for less-invasive treatment tends to filter out all but the most challenging cases by the time surgery is warranted.

 

"We used to operate on more patients who were healthy, but now a lot of those patients are being treated with either medications or other less-invasive procedures by a cardiologist or pulmonologist," he said.

 

As a result, a high percentage of patients he sees are those with advanced disease and co-morbidity — for example, with lung or kidney problems to go along with their heart troubles.

 

The way cardiothoracic surgeons have responded to that challenge, though, is an encouraging sign for the future, Merrill said.

 

"The danger of the work has gone up quite a bit, so it's really quite remarkable that despite that fact, the results have actually improved," he said.

 

"My hope is that over time, we get a little smarter about what we're doing and learn better how to care for patients, so that even though the risk is higher, the results continue to improve."

 

A native of Andalusia, Ala., Merrill received a medical degree in 1974 from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where he completed an internship and general and cardiothoracic residency training. He completed a research fellowship with the National Institutes of Health, and served as senior registrar in thoracic surgery at the Hospital for Sick Children in London.

 

Beyond his medical practice, Merrill enjoys spending time outdoors, particularly exercising, gardening and fly-fishing. He and his wife, Morgan, have been getting settled in their new home in northeast Jackson.