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Dr. Kim has a wide range of clinical and research interests. His early research was performed under a K08 award with Dr. David Sachs at the Massachusetts General Hospital and focused on transplant tolerance induction in miniature swine using in utero stem cell transplantation, an interest he developed as a research fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Alan Flake at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
In 2002, during his pediatric surgery fellowship, he developed a novel intestinal lengthening and tapering procedure known as the Serial Transverse Enteroplasty (STEP) to treat patients with short bowel syndrome; the STEP is now the preferred surgical procedure worldwide for this condition. He has also pioneered innovative approaches to transplantation of small children with anatomic abnormalities and was the first in the world to successfully transplant a partial esophagus as part of a multivisceral transplant.
Dr. Kim helped organize one of the most comprehensive multidisciplinary centers in the world dedicated to the treatment of children with midaortic syndrome and renovascular hypertension. This has resulted in the development of two novel methods to treat these children without the need for prosthetic grafts. The first, known as Tissue Expander Stimulated Lengthening of Arteries (TESLA), lengthens the normal aorta using a tissue expander, allowing for aortic replacement without a prosthetic graft. The second, known as Mesenteric Artery Growth Improves Circulation (MAGIC), takes advantage of the natural ability of arteries to grow when placed into the correct environment and uses one of these arteries as the bypass graft itself, again avoiding prosthetic graft material in small growing children.
In 2016, he turned his research efforts toward formalizing the innovation culture at Boston Children's and created the Surgical Innovation Fellowship, aimed at training and developing the next generation of surgical innovators, particularly in the medical device space. He is a Co-Director of the fellowship and a Co-Director of the Surgical Innovations Lab, and is a co-founder of ClearCut Surgical, Inc., a startup formed to bring one of his early devices to market.
Dr. Heung Bae Kim is the Robert C. Shamberger Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School and the Weitzman Family Chair in Surgical Innovation at Boston Children's Hospital (BCH). He currently serves as the Vice Chair for Clinical Operations in the Department of Surgery, the Director of the Pediatric Transplant Center and Surgical Director of the liver, kidney and intestine transplant programs, Co-Director of the Midaortic Syndrome and Renovascular Hypertension Center, and Co-Director of the Surgical Innovations Lab.
Born in Korea and raised in Philadelphia, Dr. Kim attended Yale University as an undergraduate and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine before returning to Philadelphia to complete his general surgical training at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, with two years of research training at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia in the laboratory of Dr. Alan Flake. After completing his Pediatric Surgical Fellowship in 2002 at BCH and his Liver Transplant Fellowship at the Lahey Clinic in 2004, he assumed the surgical directorship of both the liver and kidney transplant programs and started the only intestine transplant program in New England, completing the first multivisceral transplant in 2004. Under his leadership, the Pediatric Transplant Center has grown into one of the busiest and most comprehensive pediatric transplant centers in the country.
Dr. Kim has won numerous academic awards including the Penn Pearls Teaching Award for medical student teaching at the University of Pennsylvania, the Keith Reemstma Surgical Resident of the Year Award at Penn (voted by the attending staff among all surgical residents), the Rosenkrantz Resident Research Award for the best presentation at the American Academy of Pediatrics Surgical Section, and the Teacher of the Year Award at BCH three times as the best teacher as voted by the surgical residents. In 2013, he was the first recipient of the Sheikh Zayed Prize for Pediatric Surgical Innovation at the Pediatric Surgical Innovation Symposium in Washington DC. He has served in several national leadership roles at the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), including Chair of the Pediatric Transplantation Committee, Region 1 Councillor, Region 1 Representative to the Board of Directors, and Vice Chair of the Membership and Professional Standards Committee, and has served as Chair of the Board of Trustees of New England Donor Services. He has lectured worldwide on his clinical and research interests and was invited to Japan to perform the first STEP procedure in that country. He has coauthored more than 130 original papers or chapters and has contributed significantly to both the pediatric surgical and the transplantation literature.
Meet Dr. Heung Bae Kim
Learn more about the Pediatric Transplant Center - one of the most advanced pediatric transplant centers in the country.
Our team has spent more than three decades giving thousands of children with end-stage liver disease a second chance at life.
Dr. Heung Bae Kim on the STEP procedure.
Watch Heung Bae Kim, MD explain Mesenteric Artery Growth to Improve Circulation (MAGIC), a type of surgery he helped pioneer for midaortic syndrome.
Watch Heung Bae Kim, MD explain Tissue Expander Stimulated Lengthening of the Arteries (TESLA), a procedure he helped pioneer for midaortic syndrome.
Meet Mac - a kidney transplant recipient at Boston Children's Hospital.
Meet Bri - a kidney transplant recipient at Boston Children's Hospital
Tom received his liver transplant at 15 years old. #becauseofadonor, Tom is able to run the Boston Marathon.
Justin seemed perfectly healthy, but at a routine checkup to clear him for football season, his pediatrician noticed his blood pressure was extremely high. Tests uncovered a troubling diagnosis: Midaortic syndrome.