Michael G Hughes, M.D.

Michael Hughes Jr., MD, is a board-certified surgeon and owner of Vanguard Surgical LLC. Dr. Hughes provides general and gastrointestinal surgery services to people in Louisville, Kentucky, and around the world to improve their quality of life.

Dr. Hughes is a true surgical innovator when treating chronic pancreatitis. He established the islet autotransplant (TP-IAT) program at the University of Louisville Health – Jewish Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky, thanks to a grant worth nearly $1 million from the Jewish Heritage Fund for Excellence. 

Dr. Hughes then co-founded Koligo Therapeutics to expand islet autotransplantation to hospitals around the world. He served as Koligo’s chief medical officer and trained surgeons throughout the United States how to perform the procedure. He continues to work with Koligo Therapeutics to treat his patients and is one of the top 5 surgeons world-wide performing TP-IAT.

After earning his medical degree from Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Dr. Hughes completed his residency at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia. 

He also completed a transplant surgery fellowship at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities in Minneapolis, Minnesota, before serving as an attending surgeon and Assistant Professor of Surgery at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston and then the University of Louisville, where he was promoted to Associate Professor of Surgery

While at the University of Louisville, Dr. Hughes performed more than 1,000 gastric stimulator surgeries as an abdominal transplant surgeon and the director of the pancreas transplant program. He also began focusing on the surgical treatment of gastroparesis and started his own practice to meet the demand for these services. He has now done more than 1,600 gastric stimulator surgeries and 500 pyloroplasty surgeries. 

Dr. Hughes is the only surgeon in the United States performing these procedures at an ambulatory surgical center (ASC), which offers significantly reduced costs for patients and insurance companies.

Dr. Hughes has received the recognition of his colleagues with numerous awards, including the American Society of Transplant Surgeons – Team Donate Life Junior Faculty Award, the Poster of Distinction Award from the American Transplant Congress, and the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases Career Development Award in Liver Transplantation.

With a mission to provide his patients with a better life, Dr. Hughes takes a caring and efficient approach to addressing the challenges of chronic pancreatitis and gastroparesis.