Janelle Thorn is a Senior Partner at CCVSA and joined the practice in 2021. She was admitted to the partnership in July-2022. She obtained her Master’s in Physician Assistant Studies from the University of Alabama-Birmingham (UAB) where she found her calling for high-stakes cardiothoracic surgery cases during her clinical rotations.
After graduation, she was selected for a prestigious fellowship at the Debakey Heart and Vascular Institute in Houston where she honed her operative skills with some of the leading cardiovascular surgeons in the world. She credits the case volume of high-risk open aortic cases as instrumental to her development. In her words, “I was challenged both mentally and technically every day – excellence was the standard, not the aspiration. I learned to become a value-add member of a prestigious surgical team and moved my way up from barely being in the ‘field’ to first-assisting on complex cases such as aortic arch repairs, aortic dissections and thoracoabdominal aortic aneurysm repairs.
After completion of her fellowship, she obtained a glowing letter of recommendation and obtained a position at the Cleveland Clinic as one of the Lead Operative Surgical PAs on the Aortic Surgery Service, first- and second-assisting on complex open aortic cases (often on DHCA with long CPB pump runs). She moved to Colorado in 2018 to accommodate her fiancé’s fellowship in plastic and reconstructive surgery – he now has a private practice in Denver. She is frequently requested by top Cardiothoracic Surgeons as their preferred First Assist for high-risk open aortic cases.
