Friday, November 12, 2010

Surgery Chair to Give Free Community Lecture

Dr. William O. Richards, professor and chair of surgery at the University of South Alabama College of Medicine, will present a free community lecture titled “Bariatric Surgery for Morbid Obesity” at 6 p.m. on Nov. 16, 2010. The lecture will take place in the Atlantis Room in the CWEB-II building behind USA Children’s and Women’s Hospital.

Dr. Richards’s clinical interests focus on surgical treatment for Type 2 diabetes and treating motility disorders of the gastrointestinal tract using minimally invasive surgical procedures. He has performed more than 1,000 laparoscopic procedures since 1990, including numerous laparoscopic bariatric procedures.

Dr. Richards received his medical degree from the University of Maryland School Of Medicine in Baltimore. He completed his internship at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Fla., and his surgery residency at the University of Maryland. Following his residency, Dr. Richards completed a surgical fellowship in portal hypertension and endoscopy at Emory University in Atlanta. In addition, he also completed a research fellowship in gastrointestinal motility at the Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville.

Dr. Richards is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons and a member of numerous professional societies, including the American Surgical Association, the Society of University Surgeons, the Southern Surgical Association, the Society for Surgery of the Alimentary Tract, the Association for Academic Surgery, the Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons, the American Society of Metabolic and Bariatric Surgeons and the American Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy.

For more information on the lecture, call (251) 471-7413.

Directions: Enter the Geri Moulton Children’s Park from Springhill Avenue. At the end of the park, turn right on Center Street and then left on Cox Street. Turn left into the rear parking lot and pass the guard shack. There are several buildings accessible from this parking lot. CWEB II/Atlantis room is the last building.