The “Top Doctors” list is back. When the listing last ran, in April 2002, readers responded enthusiastically and, later, that issue became one of our most-requested. It seems Pittsburghers like to do their own kind of checkup: Are their docs on the list? If not, who is? The list’s popularity also reflects the vibrancy of the region’s medical community, which continues to be a vital economic engine as well as a source of medical advances and research.
Clearly, the physicians selected for this list are driven and motivated. After all, they made it through medical school and sleepless residencies. But what’s so compelling about each of them is the love they have for what they do. The ability to save lives and help people keeps the stethoscopes around their necks and the passion in their voices.
This time, Castle Connolly Medical Ltd. compiled our list of doctors. Castle Connolly’s physician-led team of researchers follows a rigorous screening process to select top doctors on both the national and regional levels. Using mail and telephone surveys and electronic ballots, they ask area physicians and medical leadership of area hospitals to identify highly skilled, exceptional doctors. Careful screening of doctors’ educational and professional experience is essential before final selection is made among those physicians in each specialty most highly regarded by their peers.
Of course, there are many fine physicians in our community who are not included in this representative list; it is intended as a sampling of the great body of medical talent that calls Pittsburgh home. So check out the list—including the eight individual doctors highlighted in more-intimate detail. You’ll meet a group of professionals with diverse backgrounds and interests, from a Jamaican immigrant who is a Baptist minister to a mother of six.
 Castle Connolly's physician-led team of researchers
follows a rigorous screening
process to select top doctors
on both the national and
regional levels. Using mail
and telephone surveys, and
electronic ballots, they ask area physicians
and the medical leadership of area hospitals
to identify highly skilled, exceptional doctors.
Careful screening of doctors’educational
and professional experience isessential
before final selection is made among
those physicians in each specialty
most highly regarded by their peers.
America's Top Doctors (fourth edition) $29.95; available in bookstores, online at www.CastleConnolly.com or by calling toll-free 1-800/399-DOCS (3627).
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NALINI RAO, M.D.
CHIEF, DIVISION OF NFECTIOUS DISEASE, UPMC SHADYSIDE; CLINICAL PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE AND ORTHOPAEDICS, UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH SCHOOL
OF MEDICINE
Travel medicine might seem a likely specialty for a woman who has worldwide experience. In fact, it is Nalini Rao’s interest in infection prevention that has driven her career around the globe.
One of Rao’s specialties is the fight against health-care-associated infections, particularly those resulting from implants or joint replacements. But her private practice of travel medicine serves a broader spectrum of patients planning or returning from trips. “It’s not just tropical medicine,” the Fox Chapel resident explains. “There are a number of travel-related health risks, from accidents to traveling with conditions like HIV or pregnancy. People may need daily insulin, blood thinner or oxygen.”
At UPMC, Rao, 57, is directing efforts to combat new strains of staph infections that resist antibiotics. “As Pittsburgh is the No. 1 transplant center, infections are a major concern here,” she says. “We want to develop a methodology to combat infection incidences throughout acute-care facilities, then extend it to long-term-care facilities. And hand-washing is the simplest and most effective way to limit infection—that’s a major educational initiative.”
Rao, who grew up in India, the youngest of six siblings, often combines her overseas visits to Asia with humanitarian missions, helping doctors in other countries develop infection-fighting strategies. She has traveled to Africa, Afghanistan and China, and revisits her native land every few years—including
a planned visit to her hometown of Bangalore this month.
–Christine H. O’Toole
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