Dr. Mihae Yu, MD, FACS

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Get to know General Surgeon and Critical Care Surgeon Dr. Mihae Yu, who serves patients in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Extremely prolific in the field of general surgery and surgical critical care, Dr. Yu specializes in abdominal surgery (stomach, colon, rectum, gallbladder, intestine, pancreas, retroperitoneal tumors), hernias, robotic surgery, and breast and thyroid surgery. She is an attending physician at Kuakini Physicians Tower, located within Kuakini Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. 

As for her academic appointment, she serves as Professor of Surgery at the University of Hawaii John A. Burns School of Medicine. She started the ACGME-accredited University of Hawaii Surgical Critical Care Fellowship Program in 1992 and held the position as Program Director of Surgical Critical Care until 2019> Under her leadership, this Program has received multiple, maximum ACGME accreditation cycles with commendation.

With a broad educational background, Dr. Yu graduated magna cum laude with her Bachelor of Arts degree in Biochemistry from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. She then received her medical degree from the University of Hawaii John A. Burns School of Medicine, where she was inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society. 

This was followed by residency training in general surgery at the University of Hawaii, where her PGY-2 year was completed at the Massachusetts General Hospital via an invitation from Dr. Ronald Malt, Chief of Gastrointestinal Surgery. Finally, she completed a fellowship in Surgical Critical Care at the University of Miami.

A Fellow of the American College of Surgeons (FACS), the doctor is board-certified in general surgery and surgical critical care by the American Board of Surgery (ABS). The ABS is an independent, non-profit organization located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, founded for the purpose of certifying surgeons who have met a defined standard of education, training, and knowledge.

Dr. Yu has been in Private Practice since 1985 while holding an academic position with the University of Hawaii. She was the Medical Director of the Surgical Critical Care Unit at The Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii from 1985 to 2019.

An enthusiastic researcher, she conducts research in shock and shock resuscitation, tissue oxygen monitoring, and in the measurement of intravascular volume. She has presented her work or has served as an invited speaker or faculty member at both national and international-refereed scientific venues. 

Moreover, she has been a Guest Editor or a Reviewer for nine peer-reviewed journals, has successfully obtained continuous extramural funding to conduct her research, and is a member of numerous professional organizations dedicated to the disciplines of surgery and critical care. She is one of the three editors to the critical care textbook, Civetta-Taylor-Kirby Critical Care, which has been one of the renowned textbooks, both nationally and internationally.

General surgery is a surgical specialty that focuses on abdominal contents including the esophagus, stomach, small bowel, colon, liver, pancreas, gallbladder, appendix and bile ducts, and often the thyroid gland. A general surgeon performs a wide range of abdominal surgeries for many forms of intestinal and abdominal wall neoplasms, gallbladder disease, gastric and pancreatic disease. They follow the patient through critical care and surgical recovery all the way to outpatient care.

Surgical critical care is a sub-specialty of surgery and relates to the care of patients with acute, life-threatening or potentially life-threatening surgical conditions. A critical care surgeon is a surgeon with expertise in the surgery and management of the critically ill and postoperative patients, They specialize in critical care medicine diagnoses, treats, and supports patients with multiple organ dysfunction, especially those with sepsis and trauma related issues.

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