David B Babitt , MD

Ramesha Papanna, MD, MPH, is a double board-certified and fellowship-trained specialist in maternal-fetal medicine and obstetrics and gynecology. He is one of a few formally fellowship-trained fetal interventionists in the country. His clinical interests include fetal intervention for conditions including twin-twin transfusion syndrome, in utero spina bifida repair, and other fetoscopic-based and needle-guided in utero procedures. He pioneered the novel method of fetoscopic spina bifida repair using cryopreserved human umbilical cord as a meningeal patch to improve spinal cord function in children.He’s also a professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston, the program director for the Fetal Intervention Fellowship, and co-director of The Fetal Center.Papanna received his medical degree in 2000 from Kasturba Medical College in India. He completed his residency at Rochester General Hospital in 2008 with a research focus on the diagnosis of preeclampsia. He received his masters in public health in 2009 from The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. In 2010, he completed a fetal intervention fellowship at Baylor College of Medicine, followed by a maternal-fetal medicine fellowship at Yale School of Medicine in 2013 that focused on fetal membrane biology for the prevention of preterm, premature rupture of the membranes after fetal surgery.He is recognized for his research and presentations about improving outcomes following fetal intervention and investigating methods for preventing preterm delivery and is involved in multiple research studies. This includes NIH-funded research investigating a cryopreserved human umbilical cord patch as a regenerative matrix for in utero spina bifida repair. He has multiple NIH-funded collaborative studies to improve understanding of the health and disease in fetal conditions.