Inspired by Service, Connecticut Native Returns to Trinity Health Of New England

By Kim Lucey Millen  /  Photography by STAN GODLEWSKI

Angela Yuan, M.D., still remembers the patients she and the team from Saint Francis Hospital served in Bolivia. Working in a hospital with no air conditioning, except for the operating rooms, they helped dozens of women with gynecological conditions, some of them very serious and extremely uncomfortable. That visit in April of 2015 was her first mission trip with the team from Saint Francis, and Dr. Yuan was a fourth-year medical student at the time. The experience helped shape her professionally, guiding her toward a specialty as a urogynecologist, and also personally.

“That act of doing good through service is very much integral to Saint Francis Hospital,” said Dr. Yuan. “And it’s one of the reasons I decided to come back. I wanted to be part of that tight knit feel of community.”

The Path Back Home

Born in Boston, Dr. Yuan was raised on the Connecticut shoreline in Guilford. She stuck with the Nutmeg state for college and medical school, attending the University of Connecticut (UConn). Her clinical training through UConn School of Medicine served as her first introduction to Saint Francis, part of Trinity Health Of New England, meeting many of the doctors on rotation and learning from their experience and specialties.

After heading north to New Hampshire to complete her obstetrics and gynecology residency at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, she matched at Cleveland Clinic. There, she completed her fellowship in Female Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery. During her time in Ohio, the pandemic hit. Dr. Yuan and her husband found themselves making the long drive back to New England often with their two young children to stay safe and see family. So, when a urogynecologist position popped up with the Trinity Health Of New England Medical Group in 2022, she responded immediately, to bring her family home. Her kids are thrilled to be closer to their grandparents.

“I feel like I’m paying it forward to the community where I grew up,” said Dr. Yuan. “And now I’m able to help inspire the next generation to do the same.”

She enjoys mentoring medical school students and residents, helping them start their research projects and becoming competitive applicants for fellowships. In her spare time, Dr. Yuan enjoys biking around her new hometown of West Hartford with her husband and kids. She is an avid reader, completing 27 mystery and thriller books last year. And she picked up knitting during her time in New Hampshire, where she was part of a knitting club. Now her kids get to sport all her homemade sweaters and hats all winter long.

Finding Her Specialty

Pelvic floor disorders affect about half of the women in the United States. As a urogynecologist, Dr. Yuan works to help to address these issues, which can include the loss of pelvic floor support (prolapse), loss of bladder or bowel control (urinary or fecal incontinence), and pelvic floor dysfunction.

“Many women can feel embarrassed to talk about these things,” said Dr. Yuan. “But, in the past 5 to 10 years, we’ve seen women become more empowered to talk to their doctor about what’s going on and fix it. These are common issues that are generally not life-threatening, but at the end of the day, taking a woman’s focus off of finding a bathroom does a huge part in alleviating her daily mental burden.”

Dr. Yuan stressed that this is not a normal part of aging; it’s something going wrong with the support of the patient’s urethra, and something nearly everyone will deal with to some degree in their life. During that memorable mission to Bolivia 9 years ago, Dr. Yuan helped address some of the most extreme examples she had experienced up to that point.

“I learned even the most extreme examples don’t have to be this way,” said Dr. Yuan. “It’s empowering to be able to fix even the most severe cases and give women their normal lives back.”

Dr. Yuan offers non-surgical and surgical treatments, noting that many issues can be addressed with medication or a physical therapist. She has extensive training in minimally invasive surgical techniques, and performs vaginal, laparoscopic and robotic surgeries.

Looking to the Future

The field of urogynecology has gained a lot of steam in the past decade after becoming formalized into a field in 2012. While many great strides have been taken during that time, Dr. Yuan says there is always more to learn. For example, in many cases of prolapse surgery, she says the uterus would become a “passive victim,” and have to be taken out during the process. But, in the past 5 years, doctors have really started exploring whether or not a hysterectomy is needed for prolapse surgery and taking more effort to preserve the uterus.

Dr. Yuan says an ongoing challenge in her field is the current FDA ban on transvaginal mesh for prolapse care. She says results had been mixed with mesh before the ban, as it had been associated with complications and side effects, but it also provided many women with control of their prolapse with excellent results. Now, she’s hoping to find a new solution to help women in a long-lasting way and believes that more research is needed to engineer something safer for women to use. She is also taking it upon herself to research the results and safety of prolapse and incontinence surgery to help improve outcomes for future patients. She noted, “the only way to make sure we seek excellence, is to always work toward improving.”

Paging Dr. Yuan

Dr. Yuan is an assistant professor in the Department of OB/GYN of the Frank H. Netter, M.D. School of Medicine at Quinnipiac University. She is also a fellow of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and a member of the American Urogynecologic Society.

Dr. Yuan’s main practice is in Bloomfield at 580 Cottage Grove Road, where she does new patient evaluations, consultations and testing. This office also features on-site pelvic floor physical therapy right next door to Dr. Yuan’s office, making treatment seamless for many of her patients. While the majority of her surgeries are done at Saint Francis, she also serves patients at two other Trinity Health Of New England hospitals: Saint Mary’s Hospital in Waterbury and Mercy Medical Center in Springfield, Mass. In order to increase access to these specialty services across the region, she also sees patients in the Trinity Health Of New England Medical Group Urology practice in Middlebury.

To schedule an appointment with Dr. Yuan, or to learn more about all of Trinity Health Of New England’s Women’s Health services, visit trinityhealthofne.org/womens.

Kimberly Millen is a freelance journalist with more than two decades of experience in both print and broadcast media. She lives in New England with her husband and son, exploring all that each of the four seasons has to offer.

Stan Godlewski is an editorial, corporate and healthcare photographer based in Connecticut and working primarily between Boston and New York City.