Surgeons Lily Daniali and Benson J. Pulikkottil experience how HCA Healthcare allows them to collaborate with colleagues across specialties to increase their offerings.
Within months of beginning their plastic surgery practice in 2016 at Swedish Medical Center in Englewood, Colorado, Lily Daniali, MD, and Benson J. Pulikkottil, MD, made national headlines with one special patient. Lee Brooke, a hunter from Pennsylvania, sustained extensive damage to his nose and upper lip in a grizzly bear attack. Over the next three years, Dr. Daniali and Dr. Pulikkottil performed roughly 30 procedures to reconstruct Lee’s face. The resulting national media attention highlighted the cutting-edge care delivered by Dr. Daniali and Dr. Pulikkottil, their partners, and their staff at Swedish Medical Center, a Level I trauma and burn center.
Since then, the husband-and-wife team has continued to expand the facility’s burn and reconstruction programs. Dr. Daniali and Dr. Pulikkottil, who first met in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, have been married for 10 years.
Q: What are some advantages of working together?
A: Dr. Pulikkottil – We work together to figure out what approach is the best, what postoperative plan is going to be the most appropriate. We’re always talking to each other.
A: Dr. Daniali – There’s no one else I trust more, with a long time of working both professionally and personally together. I know him very well and I trust his judgment as a clinician very much. When it comes down to it, we just know how to work with each other. It’s become second nature.
Q: What are your specialties?
A: Dr. Daniali – We have a very broad-based practice. We both do hand surgery, microsurgery, general reconstruction and post-cancer reconstruction. We do some nerve surgery for amputees and aesthetic surgery. We have a private aesthetic practice (The LaVie Institute) that opened last November.
A: Dr. Pulikkottil – Both of us are double board certified in plastic surgery and hand surgery. I’m medical director of the burn unit as well. It includes Lily and two other partners (Ryan Endress, MD, and Wojciech Przylecki, MD). We secured American Burn Association verification in 2022, which is a huge deal for the hospital.
Q: Can you elaborate on the scope of your work?
A: Dr. Pulikkottil – It’s an amazing practice because we get to apply these [plastic surgery] principles to a multitude of cases. We’re not pigeonholed into one specific type of surgery. The cornerstone of the practice is burn reconstruction. We’ve put our other skill sets into this and expanded our reach throughout the hospital, providing collaborations with orthopedic surgery, head-and-neck surgery, neurosurgery, dermatology, primary care doctors and therapists. There’s a potential for us to intervene and assist with patient care in every aspect at Swedish Medical Center.
Additionally, we do a ton of burn reconstruction, and typically burn units aren’t run by plastic and hand surgeons. We add microsurgical reconstruction to a lot of burn patients’ wounds. We also have an extremely robust limb-salvage program. Not only do we save arms and legs, but we do complicated nerve work, including a procedure called targeted muscle reinnervation. We rewire the nerves of the upper and lower extremity to decrease pain or to make prosthetics work almost in a mind-controlled fashion. We and our partners do about 40 to 60 surgeries every week together.
HCA Healthcare brings like-minded, committed and motivated physicians together to create great programs. Whenever we’ve had a need, our administration has been very supportive and committed to quality.— Lily Daniali, MD, Swedish Medical Center
Q: Your work with Lee Brooke created a media sensation. Can you tell us more about that?
A: Dr. Pulikkottil – He was attacked by a grizzly bear while hunting. His face was separated from his skull, specifically his nose and upper lip. We took that tissue and kept it alive by sewing it to his arm while we worked
on his face. He went through roughly 30 surgeries with us. Swedish Medical Center got a lot of exposure as a center that can take care of these patients. And Lee developed this new identity as a survivor. He started publicly talking about his story and inspiring others.
A: Dr. Daniali – It thrust a lot of attention on the practice and what we could do for the region. It was really about being there for somebody and showing the power of stage reconstruction. We take great satisfaction from knowing that there’s someone who is back to living his life and spending time with his loved ones and doesn’t feel defined or held back by a truly traumatic experience.
Q: What were the long-term effects for the patient and for both of you?
A: Dr. Daniali – We take great satisfaction knowing that there’s someone who is back to living his life, spending time with his loved ones, and doesn’t feel defined or held back by what could have been a truly traumatic experience. He’s out there, interfacing with people, and riding bikes, and having fun with his wife.
A: Dr. Pulikkottil – He really is an advocate for us. We don’t look like the typical plastic surgeons. We’re a married couple, we’re kids of immigrants, first generation. There’re not many people that look like us. He always talked about us in such a positive light.
Q: Aside from bear attacks, what are the more complicated aspects of your work?
A: Dr. Pulikkottil – We do a ton of burn reconstruction, and typically burn units aren’t run by plastic and hand surgeons. We add microsurgical reconstruction to a lot of burn patients’ wounds and defects. We also have an extremely robust limb salvage program. Not only do we save arms and legs, but we do complicated nerve work. We do a procedure called targeted-muscle reinnervation. We rewire the nerves of the upper and lower extremity to decrease pain or to make prosthetics work almost in a mind-controlled fashion. We and our partners do about 40 to 60 surgeries every week together.
Q: What are some advantages of being part of the HCA Healthcare family?
A: Dr. Daniali – For us, it’s really being able to leverage interdisciplinary care. We have amazing collaborations with other colleagues and specialties. HCA Healthcare brings like-minded, committed and motivated physicians together to create great programs. Whenever we’ve had a need, our administration has been very supportive and committed to quality. That’s been important for the expansion of the burn program.
A: Dr. Pulikkottil – The multidisciplinary team approach is paramount to our mutual success. Surgical success takes talented and committed nurses, APPs, nutritionists, therapists, OR staff and so many other people working together for the same goal: providing the highest level of clinical care at Swedish Medical Center.
Q: How rewarding is your work?
A: Dr. Daniali – It’s very rewarding. We were just having a conversation with our partners about where we want to be in 10 years, what kind of work do we want to be doing. And I really want to be doing the work I’m doing now. And it helps, when you’re working hard, to be able to see that effect in people. I feel like I was very blessed to come out of training and be exactly where I want to end my career. It’s a great feeling to just be able to focus on patient care and build our family and be a part of the community.
A: Dr. Pulikkottil – We have 5-year-old and 3-year-old boys, and we don’t want to be those surgeons who look back and wish we spent more time with them. We work hard to get home. But even still, the other night, there was a 96-year-old with a table-saw injury who came in. Right after that, it was an emergency hematoma, and I was in the hospital until midnight. So you have to be on point as a surgeon, as a husband, as a parent. Fortunately I have Lily who is my equal and oftentimes can be my support team to get me through this stuff. That’s how we work together.
