Pushpa Viswanathan, MD, FAAP

  • Associate Professor of Pediatrics
  • Director, Multidisciplinary Thyroid Clinic, UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh

Pushpa Viswanathan attended medical school at University of Kerala in India selected through a national merit scholarship program and received her medical degree in top 10% of class in 1989. She completed her Pediatric residency at Westchester Medical Center of New York Medical College in 2001 and earned the academic excellence award in 2001. Viswanathan came to Pittsburgh in 2004 to pursue a fellowship training in Pediatric Endocrinology. She completed fellowship training in Endocrinology at UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh. After fellowship training in 2008, Viswanathan joined the Division of Endocrinology faculty. She currently maintains active certification in both General Pediatrics and in Pediatric Endocrinology.

Viswanathan’s clinical area of expertise is pediatric endocrinology, with a special focus on pediatric thyroid diseases, thyroid nodulesand thyroid cancer. She has outpatient endocrine and diabetes clinics both at Lawrenceville as well as Monroeville campuses of Children's. Further, she serves clinically on the inpatient pediatric service and pediatric endocrinology consult team caring for pediatric patients admitted to Children's and infants admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit at UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital.

Viswanathan is the co-director of multidisciplinary Pediatric thyroid center at Children's. She has established a multidisciplinary thyroid clinic, which unifies care and ensures close follow-up of children with pediatric thyroid nodules and thyroid cancer. Her research has focused on various aspects of pediatric thyroid diseases including pediatric thyroid cancer, neonatal and pediatric Grave’s disease. She is also interested in quality of life measures and mindfulness measures and stress reduction in children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes. As part of the multidisciplinary thyroid team, Viswanathan is currently working on a project identifying molecular markers in the diagnosis of pediatric thyroid cancers.

Professional and Scientific Society Memberships

  • The Endocrine Society, 2004-Present
  • American Diabetes Association, 2004-2008
  • American Academy of Pediatrics-Fellow, 2011-Present

Education & Training

  • Pre-degree, Premedical, Government Women's College, University of Kerala, 1989
  • MBBS, Government Medical College, University of Kerala, 1995
  • Clinical Internship in Surgery, Medical College Hospital, 1995-1996
  • Training in Psychiatry, Medical College Hospital, 1996
  • Clinical Observer, Our Lady of Mercy Medical Center, 1997-1998
  • Internship in Pediatrics, Westchester Medical Center, 1998-1999
  • Residency in Pediatrics, Westchester Medical Center, 1999-2001
  • Fellowship in Pediatric Endocrinology, UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, 2004-2008

Selected Publications

Escobar F; Pantanowitz, L; Picarsic, J, Craig, F;Simons,J; Viswanathan, P; Yilmaz, S; Monaco, S: Ectopic Thymic Tissue: Cytomorphology and sonographic features of ectopic thymic tissue diagnosed in paediatric FNA biopsies. Cytopathology. 2018 Mar 26. doi: 10.1111/cyt.12529 

Bauer AJ, Francis GL, Waguespack S, Zimmerman D, Krishnan S, Breidbart E, Viswanathan P, McDonough R, Barger K, Yan Y, Yee JK, Bauman A, Jimenez-Vega J, Rose S, Backeljauw P, Newfield R. How Can We Apply the New American Thyroid Association Treatment Guidelines for Children and Adolescents with Thyroid Cancer to Improve Patient Management? US Endocrinology, 12(1), 39-51. DOI: 10.17925/USE.2016.12.01.39

Viswanathan P, Wood, MS, Walker WH. Follicle-Stimulating Hormone (FSH) Transiently Blocks FSHReceptor Transcription by Increasing Inhibitor of Deoxyribonucleic Acid Binding/Differentiation-2 and Decreasing Upstream Stimulatory Factor Expression in Rat Sertoli Cells. Endocrinology. 2009 Aug; 150(8):3783-91. DOI: 10.1210/en.2008-1261. Epub 2009 May 7. PMID: 19423764 PMCID: PMC2717885

Full Publication List via NIH PubMed »

Research Grants

IRB#: PRO12050327 University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Clinical and Prognostic Evaluation of Pediatric Thyroid Disease, 2015-Present

Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC, Characterization of Congenital Hypothyroid patients, 2017-Present

Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC, Evaluating the factors involved and duration to remission for Pediatric Graves' disease patients, 2017-Present

Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC, Molecular Genetics of Pediatric Thyroid Cancer, 2016-Present

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Mindfulness trait and psychosocial variables in adolescents with Type1Diabetes Mellitus, 2018-Present