10 Influential St. Louis Doctors

Rachel Fishman Oiknine, M.D.

Endocrinologist/Metabolic Specialist

St. Luke’s Hospital

Fishman Oiknine works alongside her father and husband at Diabetes & Endocrinology Specialists. Their field is one in which, with the rise of obesity and type 2 diabetes, patients vastly outnumber specialists: “The problem has grown so much that endocrinologists are currently only able to see less than 5 percent of affected patients. The only responsible approach, the endocrinologist’s mission, must be to research new therapies that prevent and treat this problem and then communicate them to the family doctors and nursepractitioners who’ve cared for the vast majority of these patients.”

Linda Shaw, M.D.

Pediatrician/General; Child-Abuse Pediatrics

SSM Cardinal Glennon Children’s Medical Center

A one-time social worker, Shaw joined Cardinal Glennon last year and is pioneering a new pediatric field, child-abuse pediatrics: “It’s only since 2009 that it became a subspecialty of pediatrics. It’s really in the infancy stages. We’ve never had a lot of funding, so I anticipate there will be an increase in knowledge as research is funded and there’s a cadre of fellows who’ve been trained in how to do research in child abuse…”

Omar Guerra, M.D.

Surgeon

Suburban Surgical Associates

Guerra performs a wide range of operations, from laparoscopic to open procedures. Despite the job’s demands, this general surgeon maintains a healthy sense of humor, with one colleague calling him “the laughing surgeon”: “My father was a general surgeon. When I was about 13 years old, I wanted to see what my dad did for a living, and he took me to go see an appendectomy. I knew after that time that it was something I wanted to do… I like taking care of patients and enjoy operating. If you enjoy your work, you can walk around with a smile on your face.”

Yvette Sheline, M.D.

Psychiatrist

Barnes-Jewish Hospital

A graduate of Harvard and Yale universities who has studied how depression affects the brain, Sheline has noticed increasing caseloads: “Whenever there’s a recession, you see a bump in depression—that’s clearly true through history. But overall, there seems to be a slow increase in depression cases. This is an area of contention, but it does seem to be not simply an effect of the way that people are diagnosed, but rather that there are some sort of trends, perhaps with increasing stress in modern life or less social support.”

Patrick Yeung, M.D.

Gynecologist

SLUCare, Saint Louis University Medical Group,

SSM St. Mary's Health Center

After overseeing Duke University’s Center for Endometriosis Diagnosis & Treatment, Yeung founded and directs the SLUCare Center for Endometriosis, located at SSM St. Mary’s Health Center. He says endometriosis is an “underdiagnosed, undertreated problem,” despite the fact that the condition can cause chronic pain and potentially affect fertility. Through minimally invasive excision surgery involving a carbon-dioxide laser (rather than ablation, which he says sometimes only addresses “the tip of the iceberg”), the center’s team strives to remove all visible disease: “There is a better option available to treat women suffering from endometriosis, and we believe early diagnosis and complete excision is the best way to improve pain, quality of life, and to preserve fertility.”

Keiko Hirose, M.D.

Pediatric Otolaryngologist/Pediatric Pain Management

St. Louis Children’s Hospital

When a local radio DJ’s daughter experienced hearing loss at a young age, Hirose reacted quickly, installing cochlear implants, first in one ear that was completely deaf, then in the rapidly deteriorating other ear: “She is a good example of how if we can be proactive at an early age—not wait for children to lose all of their hearing and experience a period of silence during their developmental years—they can do really well… Now she can sing and carry a melody. It’s remarkable. Just 10 years ago, we never would have imagined that a deaf child could do that.”

George Paletta Jr., M.D.

Orthopedic Surgeon

The Orthopedic Center of St. Louis

The longtime head team physician for the Cardinals, Paletta still lives by a lesson he learned as a med student, while treating a patient in Dr. Russell Warren’s office in New York: “Iwent into the room, and the patient was Bruce Springsteen. I’m a huge Springsteen fan, so it was the thrill of a lifetime… When Dr. Warren dictated his office note, he dictated that it was a 35-year-old rock ’n’ roll singer. I said, ‘Dr. Warren, that’s no rock ’n’ roll singer—that’s Bruce Springsteen!” He said, ‘Son, it doesn’t matter who it is. It’s not the package they come in. It’s the problem you have to deal with.’”

Susan Colbert-Threats, M.D.

Internist

Esse Health

A graduate of Rosati-Kain High School and Northwestern Uni-

versity, Colbert-Threats sees a wide range of patients. She encourages them to be honest with themselves: “You need to listen to your body. When you don’t feel well, you should pay attention to that and call it to the attention of your doctor. Don’tjust come up with reasons like ‘Oh, I’m just tired’ or ‘I need more caffeine.’ You could be self-treating something that’s serious. Sometimes, by the time that patients do see a doctor, things have been going on for a long time and they’re notdoing well. But maybe things could have gone a little bit differently had it been caught earlier.”

Geoffrey Hamill, M.D.

Radiologist

Missouri Baptist Medical Center

This month, Missouri Baptist will begin offering 3-D mammograms, or tomosynthesis, allowing doctors to identify breast cancers at “Stage 0,” before tumors spread. As medicaldirector of Missouri Baptist Breast HealthCare Center, Hamill is continually searching for ways to improve outcomes in difficult cases, such as one involving a breast-cancer survivor who was diagnosed and treated years ago: “Both the patient and our team were shocked by the development of a tumor recurrence,but vowed to move forward with new therapy options that hopefully will be successful.”

Robert Taylor Jr., M.D.

Critical-Care Specialist

Mercy Hospital St. Louis

Taylor and his colleagues have used technology to combat sepsis—more common worldwide than breast cancer, colon cancer, and AIDS—and it’s now on the decline at Mercy: “I’ve been looking for the magic bullet for 20 years for patients with sepsis, and it turns out to be an electronic medical record and a checklist that’s probably going to do the best.”