November 1, 2017

Michael R. Harrison, MD
Founder, MAGNAP
Professor of Surgery, Pediatrics, OB-GYN, and Reproductive Sciences, Emeritus
University of California, San Francisco

Patients with Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) can have their airway opened by pulling the hyoid bone and all its attachments to the airway anteriorly. But how? We have developed and are now testing in a first-in-human trial the Magnap System. A titanium encased magnet is implanted on the hyoid in an outpatient procedure. When going to sleep the patient puts on a separate external brace containing a second magnet, the airway is held open and OSA resolved.

About Dr. Michael Harrison
Dr. Michael Harrison is Professor of Surgery, Pediatrics, and Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences, Emeritus, a position he assumed in 2006 after a long-distinguished academic pediatric surgery career at UCSF beginning in 1978.  He is also the Founding Director of the UCSF Fetal Treatment Center. Dr. Harrison earned his B.A. degree from Yale University and his M.D. degree from Harvard Medical School. He completed pediatric surgery fellowship at the Rikshospitalet in Oslo, Norway, and at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. Dr. Harrison joined the Department of Surgery at UCSF in 1978, with joint appointments in pediatrics and obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences. There are currently efforts underway to establish a distinguished professorship in his honor.

Dr. Harrison is a member of numerous scientific societies, serves on the editorial boards, and has served on several national committees including the Committee on the Status of the Anencephalic as Donor (1994-99). As a member of various medical and surgical professional societies, he has been recognized by his colleagues for his contributions to the field and honored with a number of prestigious awards, including the American College of Surgeons’ Jacobson Innovation Award and Sheen Award, the First Professor P.P. Rickman Award of the British Association of Paediatric Surgeons, the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement, the Arnold M. Salzberg Mentorship Award of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Michaël Vloten Award of the Congress of the Association of Surgeons of the Netherlands, and induction into the Institute of Medicine