“Know that we take the issue of keeping this issue fresh very seriously. To that end, there are a few Top Docs ‘firsts’ in this edition that I’d like to underline.”
by Craig Outhier, Editor
Keeping it fresh. Mixing it up. Breaking new ground.
Whichever tired idiom you choose, it’s an important and necessary idea, from relationship maintenance to exercise routines to health-care cover stories that you’re doing for the 31st time in as many years.
Yes, Top Docs is back – our one-of-a-kind showcase of the Valley’s best physicians, selected by the doctors themselves, and by now a familiar and hopefully comforting sight to our subscribers and newsstand readers. But know that we take the issue of keeping this issue fresh very seriously. To that end, there are a few Top Docs “firsts” in this edition that I’d like to underline.
To start: This is the first time in my 15 years editing Top Docs that I recall profiling a physician who arrived at the photo shoot nine months pregnant. That would be Mayo Clinic anesthesiologist Megan Fah, who carried her bundle of joy with such grace that I didn’t even realize she was expecting until seeing our photo, left. If not for a certain slugging MLB superstar, she would have made a terrific cover doc – a point several in the office also made about fútbol-crazed rheumatologist Mark Freijat, who literally let his flag fly for our photographer. Find their Q&As, along with those of 15 other high-performing physicians, starting on pg. 192.
Circling back to the aforementioned ballplayer: It was a terrific coup to get Arizona Diamondbacks dual-threat Corbin Carroll on the cover with team hand surgeon Donald Sheridan, a perennial Top Doc who we profiled back in 2017. I’ve been agitating to get the outfielder in the mag since he burst onto the scene with a .260/.330/.500 slash-line as a late-season call-up in…
Sorry. Didn’t mean to go all “inside baseball,” as a colleague around here archly phrases it. Let’s just say I was very jazzed to do a brief, health- and recovery-focused interview (pg. 186) with Carroll in mid-February after the shoot at Salt River Fields. Full disclosure: This happened a day before he broke the hamate bone in his right hand during batting practice, but the interview still tracks. And given his healing history, it seems he’ll be swiping bags and blasting bombs not too long after Opening Day, anyway.
More firsts. In our ongoing, never-ending pursuit of a more perfect union of reader service and medical journalism, we’ve added two categories to Top Docs in 2026: hepatology (those are liver docs, folks) and surgical critical care medicine. It’s also the first time we’ve packaged all this medicine with a proverbial (literal?) spoonful of sugar, in the guise of managing editor Leah LeMoine’s heinously tempting Valley dessert guide. Start feasting on pg. 254.
Finally, and this one is kind of bittersweet, this is the first issue my team and I have published without the sage oversight of longtime PHOENIX production manager (and hiking czar) Mare Czinar, who is wild-catting her way into retirement after a three-decade career at the company.
When it comes to breaking new ground, she’s the expert.
