Stefan Holubar, MD

Stefan David Holubar, MD, MS, FACS, FASCRS is a member of the of the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Section and is the Director of Research for the Department of Colon & Rectal Surgery at the Digestive Disease & Surgery Institute. He is also the National Surgical Quality Improvement Surgeon Champion for the Cleveland Clinic Foundation. His appointment as a Professor of Surgery at Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine is pending. 

Background: Dr. Stefan Holubar was born and raised on Long Island. Stefan is a first generation American as his mother immigrated to New York from Stockholm Sweden, and his father family was of Ukrainian descent; Stefan has working knowledge of Swedish and German languages. Stefan’s wife is also a first generation (German)-American and is fluent in French. During medical school Stefan overcame stage 3 colon cancer related to long-standing ulcerative colitis treated with a modified 2-stage IPAA (J-pouch).

Specialty/Clinical Interests: Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, ileoanal pouches including primary pouches, pouch salvage (pouch revision/redo pouch), complex/redo/re-operative colorectal surgery, advanced laparoscopy, robotics, and 2nd opinions including virtually. 

Number of Procedures Performed: In addition to seeing hundreds of patients in clinic and virtually, each year, Dr. Holubar performs >250 major colorectal operations annually, most commonly for IBD.

Education and Training: Dr. Holubar received his Medical Degree from the University of Vermont College of Medicine in Burlington VT in 2002. After medical school, he completed his residency at North Shore Long Island Jewish Health System, where he served as Chief Resident in 2007. He continued his clinical training with a clinical fellowship in Colon & Rectal Surgery from Mayo Clinic, Rochester MN where he also completed a 2-year special fellowship during which he earned a Master of Science degree in Clinical & Translational Science, with a focus on Biostatistics and Epidemiology from Mayo Clinic in 2010. During these three years, he published over 30 peer reviewed manuscripts and dozens of national scientific presentations. Throughout his academic training, Dr. Holubar was honored for academic excellence has received several teaching awards. After Mayo, he joined Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and was eventually appointed Chief of the Division of Colon & Rectal Surgery. 

Research, Publications and Speaking: 

Presently within the Department of Colon & Rectal Surgery he serves as the IBD Surgery Section Chief, the Director of Research, and as the NSQIP Surgeon Champion for the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, and developed the database structure and oversees the Digestive Diseases Surgery Institute Quality Collaborative (DDSI-QC) for Colorectal Surgery across the Cleveland Clinics. On a national level, Dr. Holubar is actively engaged in helping lead the NSQIP IBD Collaborative, serves as Vice-Chair for the American Society of Colon & Rectal Surgery (ASCRS) IBD Committee, Co-Chair for the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation’s Professional Education Committee, and is on the Program Committee for the annual scientific meetings for ASCRS, Digestive Diseases Week (DDW), the Crohn’s & Colitis Congress (CCC), and is a regular speak at Advanced in IBD. He also is an active contributing member of the European Crohn’s & Colitis Organization (ECCO). He has lectured nationally and internationally on various IBD topics related to his specialty interests.

He has served as a reviewer for multiple journals, including JAMA Surgery, American Journal of Gastroenterology, Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (Editorial Board member), Journal of Surgical Research, IBD 360, and many others. To date, Dr. Holubar has published over 200 peer-reviewed articles, more of which are on IBD, more than a dozen book chapters, & 1 book (coeditor). 

His main clinical and research focus is IBD, with a special interest in all any Med-Surg pouch (IPAA) topics/issues, complex Crohn’s & Colitis, venous thromboembolism prophylaxis in IBD and recently received a grant from the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation to examine the role of aspirin in VTE prophylaxis. Finally, Dr. Holubar is the PI for the newly funded Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation’s Surgical Cohort and Collaborative, IBD-SIRCQ (Surgical Innovation, Research, & Quality Collaborative).

About Dr. Holubar: “I would describe myself as an honest, flexible and empathic physician-scientist whose principal desire is to relieve human suffering and is why I always am striving to achieve mastery of colorectal surgical techniques. Similarly, my intellectual curiosity, which stems from a childhood appreciation of science-fiction when I was ill from colitis, drives both my approach to clinical decision-making, and desire to advance the state of the art of health care for our patients via perpetual clinical research. It’s an honor to serve my fellow patients and humanity in this manner, and to serve as a role-model for the next generation of healthcare providers.” 

Leisure time activities:  Enjoys international travel, downhill skiing, boating, surfing, and – all with his wife and three children.