Maria Markakis Zestos, M.D., professor of Anesthesiology, has been appointed chair of the Wayne State University School of Medicine’s Department of Anesthesiology.
Dean Mark E. Schweitzer, M.D., announced the appointment, which begins May 1, on April 26.
Dr. Zestos is chief of Anesthesiology at the Detroit Medical Center’s Children’s Hospital of Michigan. Her clinical interests include pediatric cardiac anesthesia, neonatal anesthesia and resident education. Her research interests include postoperative nausea, pediatric sedation and emergence delirium.
Program director of the WSU/Detroit Medical Center Pediatric Anesthesia Fellowship from 1997 to 2013, Dr. Zestos is a member of the Resident Review Committee for the WSU/DMC Anesthesiology program, and is faculty for all three WSU-affiliated anesthesiology residency programs. Dr. Zestos also serves as a member-at-large of the WSU Faculty Senate for the past two years.
A mentor to hundreds of medical students, residents, fellows and staff, Dr. Zestos served as a member of the Graduate Medical Education Internal Review Committee for Children’s Hospital of Michigan and Pediatric Cardiology Fellowship, and the Graduate Medical Education Internal Review Committee for the WSU/DMC Nephrology Fellowship. As the WSU Pediatric Anesthesia Fellowship research mentor, she was responsible for the research activity of all fellows in the program from 2014 to 2020. She was instrumental in the development of WSU’s advanced fellowship program in Pediatric Cardiovascular Anesthesiology, launched in 2018.
A member of the faculty since 1997, Dr. Zestos is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College. She earned her medical degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1987, followed by an internship and residency in Pediatrics at Case Western Reserve University’s Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital in Cleveland. She performed an anesthesiology residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and a fellowship in Pediatric Anesthesiology at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada.
Certified by the American Board of Anesthesiology in both anesthesiology and pediatric anesthesiology, she is a past president of the Michigan Society of Anesthesiologists. Regionally, Dr. Zestos serves as a member of the Michigan Society of Anesthesiologists Board of Directors and nationally as a member of the Society of Pediatric Anesthesia’s Leadership Council. Dr. Zestos is also a member of the American Society of Anesthesiologists, the Society for Pediatric Anesthesia and the Congenital Cardiac Anesthesia Society.