Medical Board

Medical Education Director
Dr Marcelo Hochman

Dr Hochman has extensive experience in the Management of Vascular Birthmarks. Dr Hochman is double board certified in Head/Neck Surgery and Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. Dr Hochman has been listed in “The Best Doctors in America” and also in “America’s Top Surgeons” in facial plastic surgery. Dr Hochman is recognised as an expert on Vascular Birthmarks. He has a network of other Medical Specialists involved in the activities for the non-profit organisation he founded, The Haemangioma Treatment Foundation.

Director of Research
Dr Martin Mihm

Dr Mihm is founder of the Albany Medical Centre Vascular Anomalies Program and the Massachusetts General Hospital Vascular Anomalies Program. He is the Director at both clinics. He is one of the founding members of VBF. Dr. Mihm is responsible for having the World Health Organization Rare Tumour Institute classify a haemangioma as a “rare tumour.” He is Professor, Department of Pathology, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, in Boston, Massachusetts and is the leading Pathologist in the country studying vascular anomalies. He is also Co-Director of the WHO melanoma pathology and is the Director of the Vascular Tumours Research Team and the Scientific Advisory Committee.

Director, Laser Therapy
Dr. Susanne Astner

Dr. Astner graduated from Vienna Medical School, where she received her MD degree from the University of Vienna, Medical School. She then completed a residency in family practice at the Hanusch Krankenhaus Hospital in Vienna. She continued her training with a dermatology and research fellowship at Harvard, at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine and the MGH Laser Center. Later on Dr. Astner joined the vascular malformation clinic at MGH under the direction of Martin C. Mihm, MD and since then she has worked as the clinical and research fellow for Rox R. Anderson MD in the Dermatology Laser Clinic. Her research interest has been focusing on the development of new treatment approaches for birthmarks and other microvascular lesions – i.e. topical immunmodulators for the treatment of hemangiomas and photodynamic therapy using Benzoporphyrine derivative for the treatment of Port Wine Stains.

Her investigations included inflammatory and benign proliferative skin disorders, non-melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancer. She has authored or co-authored 6 research papers, presented 7 abstracts and posters at several national and international meeting and has been involved in formal teaching exercises of medical students, residents and research fellows at the Wellman Center of Photomedicine.

Medical/Surgical Director
Dr Stavros Tombris

Dr Tombris graduated from the Aristotelian University Dental School and the Hellenic Armed Forces Corps Officers School in 1991. Dr Tombris graduated from Tufts University Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Program in 2001. He was the Surgical Consultant of the Vascular Malformation Clinic at Massachusetts, General Hospital, Boston Ma during 1999-2001, post specialty training on vascular malformations of the face with Dr. Milton Waner at Arkansas Children's Hospital in 2002.

Dr Tombris is currently working as Director in the Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Department at Athens Naval Hospital and also in a Private Practice as a Maxillofacial Surgeon. His special interest is in Haemangioma’s and Vascular Malformations of Head & Neck. PhD Cand. at Demokretian University Medical School, studying the acceleration of bone and soft tissue healing.

Ask the Doctor
Dr Ignacio Sanchez-Carpintero
Dr. Sanchez-Carpintero MD, PhD, graduated from University of Navarre, School of Medicine in Pamplona, Spain, in 1996. He completed dermatology residency in 2000 at the Clinica Universitaria of Navarre. From 2001 to 2003 he was a research fellow in Vascular Anomalies at Harvard Medical School. In addition he worked as coordinator for one year of the international study on the prognostic value of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes in melanoma sponsored by the Cancer Research Institute of New York. He worked with Dr. Martin Mihm in Massachusetts General Hospital and also in Children’s Hospital in Arkansas, with Dr. Milton Waner and Dr. Paula North. During these two years he participated in a research project in Wellman Laboratories using Photodynamic Therapy in a mouse model with vascular tumor. He was the first receipt of the Medical Education Grant given by the Vascular Birthmark Foundation, in 2001. Dr. Sanchez-Carpintero is currently Associate Professor in Dermatology at University of Navarre in Spain. He is working in the Haemangioma’s and Vascular Malformations Unit at the Clinica Universitaria of Navarre. He is in charge of Haemangioma’s and Laser Therapy treatments. His work is focused in this field and skin cancer such as melanoma. He is currently leading an open pilot study using imiquimod in the treatment of infantile haemangioma’s.