John Christein, MD

Dr. Christein is co-director of the UAB Digestive Health Center. He works in close collaboration with gastroenteroly and endoscopy, and has a very busy pancreatic surgery practice. He has performed close to 700 pancreaticoduodenectomies (Whipple procedure), currently performing about 75 per year, with a total of about 150 pancreatic operations per year.
Dr. Christein joined the faculty in the UAB Department of Surgery, Division of Gastrointestinal Surgery in 2005, after completing a two-year fellowship at the Mayo Clinic focusing on pancreatic, biliary and liver surgery. After coming to UAB, Dr. Christein was awarded the Health Services Foundation General Endowment Fund Grant for establishing a chronic pancreatitis surgical program at UAB. Soon after, he was awarded the John W. Kirklin Foundation Research Award, with which he focused on the proteomic signature of pancreatic cancer and presented this work at several national meetings.
Continuing his work in chronic pancreatitis, Dr. Christein became the first director of the Human Islet Cell Autotransplant Program at UAB, and has performed over 125 pancreatic resections with islet cell autotransplantation. For this work and research, he was awarded the Arthur M. Shipley Award in 2012 by the Southern Surgical Association. He has further collaborated with the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center on numerous research projects.