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Key Documents

John Morton

Academic Appointments

Contact Information

  • Clinical Offices
    Surgical Specialities Clinic 300 Pasteur Dr A160 MC 5313 Stanford, CA 94305
    Tel Work (650) 736-7102 Fax (650) 736-1663
    Practices at Stanford Hospital and Clinics and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital
    Schedule appointment
  • Academic Offices
    Personal Information
    Email Tel (650) 725-9777
    Administrative Contact
    Katt Clark Administrative Associate Tel Work 650-723-5672
    Not for medical emergencies or patient use

Professional Snapshot

Clinical Focus

  • Bariatric Surgery
  • Surgical Procedures, Minimally Invasive
  • Gastric Bypass
  • gastric banding
  • sleeve gastrectomy
View all 16clinical focus of John Morton

Administrative Appointments

  • Section Chief, Minimally Invasive Surgery, Stanford School of Medicine (2009 - present)
  • Director, (SCORE) Stanford Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation (2007 - present)
  • Director, Surgical Quality, Stanford University Medical Center (2007 - present)
  • Associate Editor, Surgery for Obesity and Related Diseases, SOARD Journal for ASBS (2005 - present)
  • Editorial Board, Obesity Surgery (2007 - present)
    • View All 11administrative appointments of John Morton

Honors and Awards

  • Ethan Sims Young Investigator Finalist Award, Obesity Society (2009)
  • Excellence in Teaching, Stanford School of Medicine (2009)
  • Best Student Poster, Stanford School of Medicine Research Symposium (2009)
  • Most Newsworthy Abstract (only 5 of 800 chosen), Digestive Diseases Week (2009)
  • Expert Panel on Bariatric Surgery for BMI< 35, RAND (2009)
View all 22honors and awards of John Morton

Education & Community

Professional Education

  • Fellowship: University of North Carolina, NC (2003)
  • Board Certification: General Surgery, American Board of Surgery (2002)
  • Residency: Swedish Medical Center on Broadway, WA (2001)
  • Residency: Tulane University Hospital and Clinic, LA (1999)
  • Internship: Tulane University Hospital and Clinic, LA (1994)
View All 9

Postdoctoral Advisees

Danagra Ikossi, Sharla Owens

Graduate & Fellowship Program Affiliations

Scientific Focus

Research Interests

Bariatric Surgery

Morbid obesity represents the second leading cause of preventable death in the US, scheduled to surpass tobacco as the leading cause of preventable death due to obesity’s epidemic rate of growth. Despite this clear and present danger to the nation’s health, only bariatric surgery extends hope to the morbidly obese. Laparoscopy, as in previous clinical iterations, has widened the potential pool of patients seeking surgical management of disease. Accompanying this increase in procedures should be a concurrent rise in bariatric research. Morbid obesity represents for me a compelling juncture of my laparoscopic, public health, and outcomes training that I hope to employ in examining the following questions.

Evidence-Based Surgery
The clinical science of surgery has made spectacular gains in the past century and the new century will no doubt see more advances perhaps with the aid of evidence-based medicine. Surgery has been a recent convert to the philosophy of evidence- based medicine. Surgery results have often been in the form of case series or expert opinion, which are ranked lowly in evidence grading. Given market changes and the consumer revolution reaching medicine, the ability to perform physician-oriented research will be limited. The powerful statistical and epidemiological tools that evidence- based medicine employs can help answer questions that may have no other recourse. Surgery, unlike other clinical sciences, does not lend itself to randomization. Patients, particularly in the laparoscopic experience, will demand only one arm of any randomized study. As a result, widespread dissemination of technology may take place prior to any assessment of the technology. Given these circumstances, well-designed observational studies are often the best approach. In addition, population-based studies provide a “real-world” assessment of clinical practices and avoid any study bias by examining the entire population of interest. In...

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