Department Hosts Six Prominent Surgeons in 2015-2016 Visiting Professorship Series

Each academic year, the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery brings in highly regarded surgeons and researchers to give our faculty and residents the opportunity to meet, interact with and learn from exceptional surgeons from around the world.

Last academic year, the Department was fortunate to create four new visiting professorships to complement our long-standing Norman E. Shumway Lecture, which honors Dr. Shumway’s role as a legend in cardiovascular surgery and founder of this Department.

In May 2015, the Eighth Annual Norman E. Shumway Lecture commemorated the storied careers of two of his most successful trainees, Drs. Bruce Reitz and Scott Mitchell. Dr. Reitz performed the world’s first heart/lung transplant here at Stanford in 1981. Dr. Mitchell helped make Stanford a leader in aortic surgery.

The Dr. Lawrence and Mrs. Roberta Cohn Lecture was established by another Stanford great who later served as Chief of Cardiac Surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Dr. Cohn’s former trainee, Dr. David Adams, delivered the first lecture in November 2015. Dr. Adams, the Chair of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Mt. Sinai, is one of the most influential mitral valve surgeons in the world.

We were fortunate to have Dr. Cohn join us for the inaugural lecture before his untimely death in January 2016.

Dr. James B. D. Mark Family Lecture was so-named for the former head of Thoracic Surgery at Stanford, who supported funded the new annual event. Dr. David Jones, the Chief of Thoracic Surgery at Memorial Sloan Kettering, gave the inaugural Mark lecture in January 2016, discussing the changing role of the surgeon as targeted therapy becomes the norm for treating early-stage lung cancer.

We introduced the new CT Surgery Translational Science Distinguished Lecture in March and brought Dr. Todd Rosengart to Stanford to deliver the first lecture. Dr. Rosengart, the DeBakey-Bard Chair of Surgery at Baylor, is researching whether gene and stem cell therapies may be able spur diseased hearts to repair themselves.