Repairing Valves, Repairing Lives: Dr. Taweesak Chotivatanapong Featured at Stanford's Seventh Dr. Lawrence H. and Mrs. Roberta Cohn Visiting Professor Lecture
by Roxanna Van Norman
November 12, 2024
The Stanford Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery was honored to welcome Taweesak Chotivatanapong, MD, as the Seventh Dr. Lawrence H. and Mrs. Roberta Cohn Visiting Professor to speak on Stanford campus on October 1, 2024.
Dr. Chotivatanapong is the Chairman of the International Academic Institute Program and Senior Consultant at Central Chest Institute of Thailand. He serves as a Senior Consultant at Vejthani Hospital in Thailand, is a councilor of the Asian Society of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery (ASCVTS), and is an active member of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery.
An expert in mitral valve repair and rheumatic valve repair, Dr. Chotivatanapong is a strong advocate for improving the surgical treatments of young patients with rheumatic heart disease and educating surgeons in training. His talk was titled "Repairing Valves, Repairing Lives.”
The lecture series namesake Dr. Cohn was a world-renowned expert in valve repair and replacement surgery and pioneered minimally invasive heart valve surgery, among many other innovations. Like Dr. Cohn, Dr. Chotivatanapong holds a deep commitment to excellence in the field. During the talk, he shared his guiding principles and reflected on some of his transformative patient experiences that have shaped his career and contributed to innovating and refining the precision and efficiency of valve surgeries.
"The essence of my talk begins with passion," Dr. Chotivatanapong said during his lecture. "[And] the vision that guides us, [including] perseverance that makes dreams come true, and the support and friendship that are invaluable in guaranteeing success." He highlighted critical moments in his clinical work that sparked the innovation and creativity behind his efforts to refine the mitral valve repair surgery and has made significant contributions to the development of valve repair techniques.
Over the last several years, he set up the Heart Care Foundation at the institute and served as its President. The main activities of the foundation are to provide operations for valvular heart patients who are on a long waiting list, and train young surgeons under the "Train the Trainer" program throughout Thailand. Several Centers of Excellence (COE) for valve repair have been successfully established under this program.
He also serves as Chairman COE of Thailand’s National Cardiovascular and Thoracic Disease Ministry of Public Health, and he is the Former President of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons of Thailand. In February 2020, he served as Congress President of the 28th Annual Meeting of the ASCVTS, which was held in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
Dr. Chotivatanapong received his Bachelor of Science from the Faculty of Medical Science, Mahidol University Bangkok, Thailand, is a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Thailand, and holds a Master of Management from the SASIN Institute of Business Administration, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand.
The talk was part of the annual Cohn Visiting Professor Lecture series hosted by the department and took place at the James H. Clark Center.
Cohn Visiting Professorship
Dr. Lawrence Cohn was born in San Francisco, California and was pioneering cardiac surgeon, researcher, and medical educator. He received his Bachelor of Arts with honors from the University of California, Berkeley, and his Doctor of Medicine with distinction from Stanford School of Medicine. He received graduate training at Boston City Hospital, National Heart Institute, University of California, San Francisco, and Stanford University, where he was one of Dr. Norman E. Shumway's early trainees.
At the Brigham and Women's Hospital, he pioneered the process of minimally invasive heart valve surgery and many other innovations, including New England’s first heart transplant, bioprosthetic porcine valve, and computer assisted robot surgery. He performed more than 11,500 cardiac surgical operations.
Dr. Cohn's clinical and research interests spanned the entirety of adult cardiac surgery. He published over 550 original scientific articles, 105 book chapters, and 12 books. He trained more than 150 residents and fellows, seeding the country and the world with heart surgeons. An excellent public speaker, Dr. Cohn delivered more than 1,000 lectures worldwide.
Dr. Cohn and his wife, Roberta, endowed the Lawrence H. and Mrs. Roberta Cohn Visiting Professorship at Stanford School of Medicine in October 2015.