About Christina Tragos, MD
Christina Tragos, MD, trained in General Surgery and Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery at Rush University Medical Center. She completed her Craniofacial Surgery fellowship at the University of Washington – Seattle Children’s Hospital, one of the premier craniofacial training units in the country. Dr. Tragos has experience as a general plastic and craniofacial surgeon allowing her to deal with complex patients. She serves as the Co-Director of the Rush Craniofacial Center, a comprehensive multidisciplinary clinic specializing in the care of children and families with craniofacial anomalies. Dr. Tragos specialize in anomalies of the face and the head, which can be congenital meaning a patient’s born with them — or it’s something they acquire from either an accident, or a result of cancer, or anything in life that could have caused a change in the face and the head. 80 to 90 percent of my practice is children. So my office is geared to take care of kids and families. When you get to take care of children, you can really impact their lives and minimize what they’ll need from the medical world as they get older. In my mind, if we can avoid a surgery, I think that’s a better choice for families in most cases. However, in order to preserve function — to make sure that a kid can be their best, or an adult can be their best, and go on doing the things they enjoy doing and having a very normal life — sometimes you need surgery. We have access to virtual surgical planning. So for any complicated procedure —whether we’re reconstructing a face, an upper jaw, a lower jaw or the overall skull — we can create 3D models based off CAT [computed axial tomography]scan images and do a virtual surgery where we actually do the movements of the surgery all on the computer. And this allows us to better plan for surgery, so that when we’re actually in the operating room, we can do the surgery more accurately, more efficiently and safer. I think I’m really lucky in what I do. I think I can make a huge impact. And I think that’s the most rewarding part — just being able to change a kid’s life and give them a better chance for a normal, happy life.
