Cardiothoracic surgery is the field of medicine involved in surgical treatment of organs inside the thoracic cavity — generally treatment of conditions of the heart, lungs, and other pleural or mediastinal structures.
Walter Randolph "Ranny" Chitwood Jr. is known for his work as a cardiothoracic surgeon at the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University located in Greenville, North Carolina.
Bruce A. Reitz is an American cardiothoracic surgeon, best known for leading the first combined heart-lung transplantation in 1981 with pioneer heart transplant surgeon Norman Shumway. He obtained an undergraduate degree at Stanford University a medical degree at Yale Medical School and completed an internship at Johns Hopkins Hospital (1971) and residencies and fellowships at Stanford University Hospital the National Institutes of Health (1974). He joined the surgical faculty at Stanford University (1978) then became chief of cardiac surgery at Johns Hopkins University (1982–92) and Chairman of the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Stanford (1992–2005). In 1995 he conducted another pioneering operation: the first Heartport procedure, using a device that allows minimally invasive coronary bypass and valve operations. Reitz also played a major role in the resident education program at Stanford, which he reorganized and maintained.
John Webster Kirklin was an American cardiothoracic surgeon, general surgeon, prolific author and medical educator who is best remembered for refining John Gibbon's heart–lung bypass machine via a pump-oxygenator to make feasible under direct vision, routine open-heart surgery and repairs of some congenital heart defects. The success of these operations was combined with his other advances, including teamwork and developments in establishing the correct diagnosis before surgery and progress in computerized intensive care unit monitoring after open heart surgery.
Cardiothoracic anesthesiology is a subspeciality of the medical practice of anesthesiology, devoted to the preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative care of adult and pediatric patients undergoing cardiothoracic surgery and related invasive procedures.
Lawrence H. Cohn, was an American pioneering cardiac surgeon, researcher, and medical educator. He had been on the surgical staff at Harvard Medical School since 1971 and had been a Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School since 1980. In 2000, he was awarded the first endowed Chair in Cardiac Surgery at Harvard Medical School.
Lars Georg Svensson is a cardiac surgeon and the chairman of the heart and vascular institute at Cleveland Clinic. He is the Director of the Aorta Center, Director of the Marfan Syndrome and Connective Tissue Disorder Clinic, and is a professor of surgery at Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine and Case Western Reserve University. He is also the Director of Quality Outcomes and Process Improvement for the Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery and Affiliate Cardiac Surgery Program at Cleveland Clinic.
James L. Cox is an American cardiothoracic surgeon and medical innovator best known for the development of the Cox maze procedure for treatment of atrial fibrillation in 1987.
Dasari Prasada Rao is an Indian Cardiothoracic surgeon. He was noteworthy for introducing the first open heart surgery to the state of Andhra Pradesh in India and for pioneering advanced medical care at affordable costs. Dasari Prasada Rao has won numerous awards including in 2001 the Padma Shri award, a Civilian award bestowed by the Government of India.
Richard Lee is a cardiac surgeon in St. Louis, Missouri, who helped pioneer a staged Hybrid Maze, a procedure for atrial fibrillation or AFIB. combining surgery and catheter based approaches.
John Alex Elefteriades is a medical doctor and cardiac surgeon. He is the William W. L. Glenn Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery and Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery in the Yale School of Medicine and Yale-New Haven Hospital. He serves as the Director of the Yale Center for Thoracic Aortic Disease.
Jeffrey Philip Gold is an American surgeon, medical educator, and academic administrator who has been the president of the University of Nebraska system since July 1, 2024. Prior to that, he served as the chancellor of the University of Nebraska Medical Center since February 1, 2014, as well as the executive vice president and provost of the University of Nebraska system since 2021. He also previously served as the interim chancellor and then chancellor of the University of Nebraska Omaha from May 2017 to June 2021.
Nagarur Gopinath was an Indian surgeon and one of the pioneers of cardiothoracic surgery in India. He is credited with the first successful performance of open heart surgery in India which he performed in 1962. He served as the honorary surgeon to two Presidents of India and was a recipient of the fourth highest Indian civilian award of Padma Shri in 1974 and Dr. B. C. Roy Award, the highest Indian medical award in 1978 from the Government of India.
Stanley John was an Indian cardiothoracic surgeon, a former professor at the Christian Medical College and Hospital (CMCH) and one of the pioneers of cardiothoracic surgery in India. He is reported to have performed the first surgical repairs of Ebstein's anomaly, Ruptured Sinus of Valsalva (RSOV) and Double Outlet Right Ventricle (DORV) in India. He assisted in performing the first open heart surgery in India while working at CMCH. During his tenure of 25 years at the institution, he mentored several known surgeons such as V.V. Bashi, A. G. K. Gokhale, J. S. N. Murthy and Ganesh Kumar Mani. Later, John joined Yellamma Dasappa Hospital, Bengaluru at the Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery. He is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Medical Sciences, and the Government of India awarded him the fourth highest Indian civilian award of Padma Shri in 1975. He served as the 13th President of the Indian Association of Cardiovascular-Thoracic Surgeons (IACTS) between 1982 and 1983.
Michael J. Reardon is an American cardiac surgeon and medical researcher. He is known for his work in heart autotransplantation for malignant heart tumors, an operation in which the surgeon removes the patient's heart, cuts out the malignant tumor, and reimplants the heart back in the patient's chest. He performed the first successful heart autotransplantation for a cancerous heart tumor in 1998.
Abbas Ardehali is an Iranian-American cardiothoracic surgeon at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Dr. Ardehali holds the William E. Connor Endowed Chair in Cardiothoracic Transplantation at UCLA. He is the Director of UCLA's Heart, Lung, and Heart-Lung Transplant programs, ranked by United Network Organ Sharing (UNOS) as the largest program in the United States.
William Imon Norwood Jr., also Bill Norwood, was an American pediatric cardiac surgeon and physician. He was known for the Norwood procedure, a pioneering cardiac operation named after him for children born with Hypoplastic left heart syndrome.
John D. Puskas is an American researcher, author, inventor and cardiovascular surgeon. As of 2022, he is Professor, Cardiovascular Surgery, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and chairman, Department of Cardiovascular Surgery at Mount Sinai Morningside, Mount Sinai Beth Israel and Mount Sinai West. He holds 11 U.S. patents and co-founded the International Coronary Congress and the International Society for Coronary Artery Surgery. He is credited by ResearchGate with 330 publications and 15,234 citations and as of 2022 Scopus reports an h-index of 62. Puskas is known for advancing coronary artery bypass (CABG) surgery by refining surgical techniques for all-arterial, off-pump CABG and inventing finer instruments to be used for advanced coronary bypass surgical procedures. He is credited with performing the first totally thoracoscopic bilateral pulmonary vein isolation procedure. He is the co-editor of State of the Art Surgical Coronary Revascularization, the first textbook solely devoted to coronary artery surgery.
Mario F.L. Gaudino, MD, PhD, MSCE, FEBCTS, FACC, FAHA is an Italian cardiothoracic surgeon who is the Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Professor in Cardiothoracic Surgery (II) and Professor of Clinical Epidemiology and Health Services Research at Weill Cornell Medicine and an attending cardiac surgeon at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and Weill Cornell Medical Center. He is an expert in coronary revascularization and clinical trialist. He is known for conducting the PALACS trial, which demonstrated that posterior pericardiotomy at the time of cardiac surgery reduced the incidence of post-operative atrial fibrillation and pericardial effusion.
Joseph Lamelas is a Cuban-American cardiothoracic surgeon, working in Miami, Florida, who developed the "Miami method", a technique for minimally invasive approach to aortic valve replacement and repair.
