BOSTON - Achilles M. Athanassiou, MD, has joined the Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

Athanassiou comes to BIDMC from South Shore Hospital in Weymouth, Massachusetts, where he was recruited nine years ago to create and direct their Maternal-Fetal Medicine Division.

A graduate of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Medical School in Athens, Greece, Athanassiou completed a residency in obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center at Houston. He then came to Boston and completed a fellowship in maternal-fetal medicine at Tufts Medical Center.

Athanassiou's clinical interests include prenatal ultrasound and multiple gestations. His research interests are focused on prenatal ultrasound, clinical obstetrics and the Bakri balloon, a non-surgical device used to treat post-partum hemorrhage (PPH).

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is a patient care, teaching and research affiliate of Harvard Medical School, and consistently ranks among the top four in National Institutes of Health funding among independent hospitals nationwide. BIDMC is clinically affiliated with the Joslin Diabetes Center and is a research partner of Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. BIDMC is the official hospital of the Boston Red Sox. For more information, visit www.bidmc.org .