Dr. Dionigi is a double board certified colon and rectal surgeon. Her personal interests and practice are focused on treatment of colon and rectal cancer, re-operative surgery for cancer as well as for inflammatory bowel disease.Dr. Dionigi obtained her medical degree with highest honors from the University of Pavia, Italy. After a surgical internship at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York, she completed her general surgery residency at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Harvard Medical School in Boston. During this time, she also did a two-year translational research fellowship related to mesenchymal stem cells at Boston Children Hospital. She then completed a colon and rectal surgery fellowship at the Salvati Fellowship Program at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson in New Jersey followed by two years of advanced reoperative cancer and IBD training at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio. Dr Dionigi then joined the Division of Colorectal Surgery at Columbia University Irving Medical Center/New York Presbyterian Hospital where she has started a new collaborative program on early onset colon and rectal cancer and has founded the Columbia WINGS, a Women in surgery association with the goal to promote women surgeons in academic leadership roles. Dr. Dionigi is the author of several publications and is a recipient of national and international awards related to research.
David Schwartzberg, MD is an assistant professor of surgery in the IBD center/division of colorectal surgery at Columbia University Medical Center in New York. He completed his general surgery residency at NYU Langone and his colorectal fellowship at The Cleveland Clinic Ohio, followed by an additional fellowship at NYU’s IBD Center for complex reoperative surgery and redo pouch surgery. He has written multiple book chapters and articles on IBD, ileal pouches and corrective surgery for failing pouches, and participates in numerous colorectal & IBD committees for national and local societies. He is also on multiple committees for the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation and has a passion for patient education and medical education. He is a native New Yorker with a wife and 3 sons.
Dr. Jeffrey Sternberg graduated magna cum laude/Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth College after which he completed medical school at the University of Chicago. He trained in general surgery at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and also completed a fellowship in Surgical Nutrition at Harvard. He first encountered the cleft-lift approach for pilonidal disease during his colon and rectal surgery fellowship at the University of Minnesota, and deepened this understanding of the technique with John and Tom Bascom in 2001. Since then, they have partnered to further evolve the technique. Dr. Sternberg now specializes in patients with challenging recurrences, treating over 1500 individuals and has a less than 1% recurrence rate and has been able to fix those who have recurred. Patients now travel from all over the United States, Canada, and elsewhere to San Francisco with challenging pilonidal problems for his care. Since completing his colon and rectal surgery fellowship in 2000, Dr. Sternberg has practiced general and colon and rectal surgery in San Francisco at California Pacific Medical Center where he has served as a Surgical Director of the IBD Center and on the hospital medical executive committee.
