Donn R. Chatham MD

Dr. Donn R. Chatham is a facial plastic surgeon and has offices in Louisville, Kentucky, and New Albany, Indiana, just minutes away over the Ohio River. A native of Kentucky, Dr. Chatham received his undergraduate education from Georgetown College, graduating cum laude in 1971 with a major in psychology and minors in art and biology.

His initial medical training was at the University of Louisville School of Medicine graduating in 1978. After an internship and year of general surgery at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis, TN, he entered into a residency in otolaryngology-head & neck surgery at the University of Tennessee, completing this in 1983. He began a fellowship in facial plastic surgery with Dr. Gaylon McCollough, and through the American Academy of Facial Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery, completed this in 1985. Dr. Chatham later was elected president of the AAFPRS and served as president in 2008-09.

Dr. Chatham participates in the volunteer program “Face-to-Face” sponsored by the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. He and other surgeons provide pro bono medical and surgical services to patients from the United States as a part of the “Domestic Violence” program and to patients in foreign countries as part of the “International” program. In 2009 Dr. Chatham was instrumental in helping the AAFPRS initiate its “Faces of Honor” pro bono program which offers facial reconstruction surgery to victims of war-related injuries.

In 1996 and 1998, Dr. Chatham traveled with four other facial surgeons from around the country to Croatia as the Face-to-Face team. Both children with facial deformities and young men wounded as soldiers in the Balkan War were operated on. Dr. Chatham also has provided volunteer medical services to St Vincent’s Island in 1984, Guatemala in 1968, Borneo in 2009, and a mission trip to Ecuador in 2011.

Dr. Chatham values continuing medical education attend 4-5 educational meetings each year and often speaks at these meetings. He has been active in leadership roles with the American Academy of Facial Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery, with headquarters in Alexandria, VA. The AAFPRS with 2500 surgeon members, is the world’s largest specialty organization of facial plastic surgeons. Dr. Chatham is also board certified by two boards: (1) the American Board of Facial Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery and (2) the American Board of Otolaryngology. With an interest in teaching, Dr. Chatham is a clinical instructor with the University of Louisville Dept of Otolaryngology in Louisville, KY, and has contributed chapters in facial plastic surgery textbooks. These include articles on ethics in facial plastic surgery, cosmetic surgery in the male patient, evaluation of preoperative patients, and recently edited a textbook titled “The Difficult Patient”.