Dear Doctor: Shoma Datta-Thomas
The NYC Maiden Lane Medical gynecologist and robotic surgeon on the importance of new technology in women’s health and what mothers can do to prioritize their health post-pandemic.
At Maiden Lane Medical, Dr. Shoma Datta-Thomas leverages her expertise in robotic and laparoscopic surgery with leading colleagues in the field of women’s health, including the president of the practice, Kenneth A. Levey, MD, MPH. Maiden Lane Medical provides a patient-friendly integrated healthcare system that creates opportunities for health maintenance and disease prevention, cares for patients with existing medical problems at levels that exceed the highest standards, and improves the medical care experience for patients and the working environment for providers.
Before and after her fellowship with Dr. Farr Nezhat, one of the pioneers of minimally invasive surgery at Mount Sinai, Dr. Datta-Thomas has been an advocate for leveraging new technologies to improve women’s healthcare and outcomes. During her residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital, she was also named the Outstanding Laparoscopic Surgeon of her class by the Society of Laparoendoscopic Surgeons (SLS) and received the Resident Achievement Award in laparoscopic procedures from the American Association of Gynecologic Laparoscopists (AAGL).
Read on to learn how she got started in medicine, which new technologies in women’s healthcare she’s most excited about, and what mothers of all ages can do to prioritize their health in the year ahead.
How did you get started in medicine and what inspired you to choose your specialty?
I feel pretty lucky to have grown up in a very academic and science-focused family. Having research scientists, professors, and doctors around me from a young age made the field feel very familiar.
Later, as I went through my medical training, I learned that I wanted to work in women’s health and specialize in something that was procedural, more hands-on, and that would leverage my interest in and aptitude for surgical techniques.
As I continued through my training, I found that I was particularly interested in the overlap of emerging technology and how it’s used in medicine, and that’s how I found my way to robotic surgery. It’s a lesser-known but crucial part of women’s health that helps women in the management of long-term chronic issues.
Can you tell us more about your work as a robotic surgeon with Maiden Lane Medical?
I feel very grateful to be a part of such a unique practice, where our president and owner is still a practicing and operating physician who has encouraged me to develop my skillset for minimally invasive surgery for women even further.
Many of my colleagues at Maiden Lane are also fellowship-trained, which enables us to comprehensively treat problems that significantly affect women’s quality of life — like fibroids, endometriosis, infertility. With minimally invasive approaches, including robotic surgery and laparoscopy, we’re able to help them manage these conditions in a way that improves their quality of life without putting a significant damper on their everyday careers or personal lives.
How is Maiden Lane’s approach to health different?
I’ve been a part of the Maiden Lane team since 2013 and as such have witnessed a great evolution of the practice. We’ve expanded to five locations to give more options to all of our patients, and now have a multi-specialty faculty that goes beyond gynecology to include urology, primary care, pain management, pelvic physical therapy, nutrition, and more.
We’ve evolved to offer our patients truly comprehensive care while always maintaining a patient-focused approach and a high quality of physicians and providers.
Why is Maiden Lane’s patient and physician-first mentality so important?
We do everything we can to ensure that the patient experience is personalized and streamlined from start to finish.
Every aspect of our communication, from appointment booking to follow-up care, is handled with extreme precision and efficiency. We use a patient portal that makes it easy for physicians and patients to communicate, and we also dedicate an entire care coordination team of nurses and nurse practitioners for each patient to ensure that everything is done in a timely fashion — including prescriptions, follow-up communication, and facilitating routine check-ups.
At the end of the day, it’s all about making sure that physicians and patients are on the same page when it comes to their care.
You’re passionate about improving the technology of diagnosis for ovarian cancer and endometriosis. Are there any particularly exciting advancements on the horizon in this area?
I’ve been fortunate to work with Aspira Women’s Health on a product called OVA1plus, which is a blood test that works as a risk assessment test for ovarian cancer. In women who have a pelvic mass who is planned for surgery, we’re able to utilize the blood work to give us an indication on whether or not there is a high risk that the mass is cancerous.
Early detection is so critical for ovarian cancer, as right now the majority of cases are detected in late stages, which really affects treatment success and survival.
What also attracted me to this test is that it’s more sensitive than the CA 125 test at detecting early stage ovarian cancer especially in the African American population.
Generally, the CA 125 test is used to monitor women who have been diagnosed with ovarian cancer, but it’s a poor indicator of whether or not cancer is present, since there are a lot of things that can elevate CA 125, including endometriosis, fibroids, and even periods. As a result, it can cause false positives.
What’s more, the baseline of numbers considered to be elevated for the CA 125 test are determined based on the average numbers in caucasian women. Which means it’s not as successful at detecting lower CA 125 levels or ovarian cancer types that are more prevalent in the African American population.
So, in addition to simplifying and hopefully improving the detection of ovarian cancer, the OVA1plus test helps to address some of the racial disparities of ovarian cancer, too.
The same company also works extensively in hereditary cancer testing with a focus on gynecologic cancers, and may, later down the pipeline, work in endometriosis diagnosis, too.
Ultimately, ovarian cancer and endometriosis diagnosis are two huge areas in women’s health that have been very, very difficult to tackle. I appreciate efforts made by companies like Aspira that are trying to revolutionize diagnostics for these two areas in particular, while also addressing significant racial disparities in women’s health.
In what ways do you think Maiden Lane’s commitment to technology is crucial to advancing women’s health in the long term?
Keeping our commitment to technology enables us to offer top-of-the-line care to our patients, while also being able to meet them where they are.
Two important examples in this area are our new in-house mammography services and our social media presence.
The newest addition of our in-house mammography services is no small feat, but it’s crucial in that it streamlines the process of care for our patients. Rather than having to refer patients out for these tests, we can now perform them and read the results in-house, increasing the convenience for patients, but also enabling them to get important results easier and faster.
Our social media presence, while a very different example of technology, is also important as it helps us to connect better with our patients. Recently, I participated in a couple of YouTube Live sessions, one on the topic of fibroids and another on the topic of health care disparities. It’s a way for our staff to communicate and engage with our community in a meaningful and informative way.
Both of these examples will help advance the care of our patients long-term by increasing convenience and improving access to important health topics.
With Mother’s Day around the corner (and over a year of COVID-19 behind us), what’s one thing mothers of all ages could do to prioritize their health?
Before Covid, mothers were already tackling difficult obstacles like pay inequality, harassment, and uncompensated domestic work — just to name a few. Since the pandemic, nearly three million women have left the workforce, causing an enormous loss of talent and a major disruption in many mothers’ careers.
In other words, it was already hard — but recently, it’s been extremely challenging. Especially for single, BIPOC mothers.
As a mother to toddlers and teens, I know first-hand how normal family life has been disrupted this past year. While I’m hopeful that with vaccination numbers on the rise we’ll soon see a return to a somewhat normal pace of life, I think it’s important for mothers to reach out to their partners and existing support networks for help — now is the time to communicate your needs. I know that this can be a lot harder said than done for some moms. But outsourcing what you can, like grocery shopping or child care, is nothing to feel guilty about, and it can help lift a significant burden off of your shoulders from time to time.
Another thing to prioritize is taking breaks, even if it’s just for ten minutes a day. Build your breaks into your schedule so that you can go for a walk, eat a good lunch, or even take a shower and give that precious solo time to yourself.
At the end of the day, prioritizing your emotional and physical health will be better for you and your family. To use everyone’s favorite airplane analogy: “Before you can help your children put on their oxygen mask, you have to put your own mask on first.”
Vital Signs
How do you de-stress? My family and I like to do physical activity together. My husband is a chiropractor so we’re lucky to have access to a big gym where we’re able to be active together.
Which activity are you most looking forward to returning to post-pandemic? Big family gatherings. We have lots of extended family in the area, and used to regularly get together for holidays with 30 or 50 people. I’m really looking forward to doing that again.
Favorite TV show or podcast of late? I listen to a lot of podcasts, and right now I’m loving White Coat Investor. My husband and I are also catching up on Ozark on Netflix.
What’s one healthful habit you’d love to see patients adopt? Know the regular routines of your body, like your ovulation cycle and routine screenings. Tuning into what’s going on in your body and what you need at different points in time can be a game-changer when it comes to preventive health.
You can learn more about Maiden Lane Medical here.
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