Dr. Mariangela Rivera, MD

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Get to know General Surgeon Dr. Mariangela Rivera, who serves patients in Columbia, South Carolina.

Dr. Rivera is a board-certified, fellowship-trained general surgeon who aims to improve the quality of life in patients seeking aesthetic body contouring and surgery. 

At present, she owns and operates a private practice that provides laser liposuction and other services to Columbia residents and the surrounding areas; known as The Ratio by BodyMath. Her clinical focus is on improving quality of life in patients who have undergone major head and neck resection. 

“At The Ratio by Body Math, our highly talented team strives to help men and women reach a balanced, proportional ratio in their bodies similar to what we see all around us in nature. We are honored to provide a varied range of effective procedures for women and men in Columbia, Blythewood, Lexington, and surrounding South Carolina communities by taking advantage of our high-end technology. Some of our most desirable treatments include laser liposuction and fat transfer and body sculpting” as stated on the practice’s website. 

A 2010 graduate of Yale School of Medicine, Dr. Rivera went on to perform her internship and residency in general surgery at Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV in 2011 and 2016, respectively. She then completed a two-year fellowship at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York where she studied head and neck surgery and microsurgical reconstruction from 2016 until 2018.

Specializing in cancers of the head and neck, the doctor is board-certified in general surgery 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.

On a professional level, Dr. Rivera is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons and a member of the American Head and Neck Society. She is also affiliated with Prisma Health Richland Hospital and Prisma Health Greenville Memorial Hospital.

Her research interests include creating software for improving post-operative monitoring and creating streamlined clinical pathways for the treatment of head and neck cancer patients.

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.

Throughout her line of work, Dr. Rivera has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of the American College of Surgeons. She has also presented at national meetings on a variety of topics, including robotic surgery and melanoma.

When she is out of the office, Dr. Rivera is on her farm raising chickens and geese. Her favorite place to vacation is in Puerto Rico.

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