SUMMARY
Sarah L. Rassier, M.D., M.P.H., has primary clinical and research interests in the care of patients with uterine fibroids. She has extensive experience working with surgical outcome studies, including leading multisite randomized controlled trials.
Dr. Rassier also has a passion for working with large databases to address health disparities and outcomes. Recent grant-funded research includes work using the Nurses' Health Study longitudinal survey data to assess long-term cardiovascular comorbidity after hysterectomy.
Current research interests include healthcare professional knowledge regarding risks of hysterectomy and long-term comorbidity associated with hysterectomy.
Dr. Rassier has mentored more than 20 postgraduate researchers.
Focus areas
- Comorbidity after hysterectomy. Dr. Rassier is investigating the impact of hysterectomy on the future development of cardiovascular disease, controlling for age at time of surgery and hormonal exposure during menopause.
- COEQUaL Community Partnership Education and Outreach Core significant contributor. Dr. Rassier aims to identify patients affected by fibroids earlier, and understand and meet their needs. Dr. Rassier is working to delineate internal and external barriers to care, optimize communication between women and a variety of healthcare professionals, and use innovative tools to eliminate barriers to individualized care.
Significance to patient care
As a minimally invasive gynecologic surgeon and clinician researcher, Dr. Rassier is passionate about finding ways to optimize women's healthcare. Her work focuses on methods to improve surgical approaches for fibroid operations. This includes methods to decrease blood loss during surgery and safely extract large specimens.
Dr. Rassier also has investigated national hysterectomy statistics by working with large state and national databases to understand the volume and breakdown of hysterectomy cases. This work has demonstrated disparities in access to minimally invasive surgery based on race and socioeconomic factors, as well as broad variation in practice patterns across regions of the U.S.
Professional highlights
- Chair, Division of Gynecology, Mayo Clinic, 2023-present.
- Director of Research, Division of Minimally Invasive Gynecologic Surgery, Mayo Clinic, 2020-present.
- Teacher of the Year, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Mayo Clinic School of Graduate Medical Education, 2020-2021.