SVS mourns death of Past President Kenneth Wayne Johnston

THE SOCIETY FOR VASCULAR SURGERY (SVS) mourns the death of Kenneth Wayne Johnston, an SVS member, former president and recipient in 2009 of the SVS’ highest honor, the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Barry Rubin, MD, chair and program medical director for the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre for the University Health Network in Toronto, writing with other colleagues, called Johnston “one of Canada’s preeminent and gifted academic surgeons … Dr. Johnston was a visionary leader, educator, researcher and tireless advocate for vascular surgery who cared for his patients with kindness and compassion. His surgical skills were outstanding and always carefully applied and he was a patient teacher of clinical skills to a large cohort of residents and fellows.

“Dr. Johnston’s work ethic was legendary, and he led by example, always contributing, learning and exploring new areas of research to apply to patients with vascular disease. He continuously questioned current dogma and used the scientific approach to develop new diagnostics and therapies and instilled this quest in the trainees who were privileged to work with him. Dr. Johnston set very high standards for himself and strove each day to meet them—we and many others were deeply influenced by watching Dr. Johnston reach those standards and are much better today because of it.”

In the U.S., Johnston played a critical role in brokering the merger of the two American vascular societies to become the SVS, overcoming strong resistance to the merger at the time. He served as vice president and then president, in 2008, leading the development of the SVS’ first strategic plan. He received the SVS Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009, to recognize his outstanding and sustained contributions to the profession of vascular surgery and to the Society itself. He is the only Canadian to ever have received this most prestigious award. He was also Vascular Specialist’s first-ever medical editor.

Said SVS Treasurer Thomas Forbes, MD, a colleague of Johnston: “Wayne was the ultimate vascular surgeon, scholar, leader and educator. More importantly he was a loving family man and trusted mentor, colleague and friend. We all looked to him for his sage advice and wisdom. He will be sorely missed, but we’ll all try to continue his legacy—locally, nationally and internationally.”

Johnston was a pioneer and driving force in the establishment of the Canadian Society for Vascular Surgery 40 years ago, and served as both its secretary and president.

At the University of Toronto, Johnston established the Division of Vascular Surgery and was its inaugural chair, a position he held for more than 20 years. As a teacher and mentor, he established the first vascular surgery training program in Canada and trained a generation of vascular surgeons, many of whom he inspired to go on to have distinguished careers in academic and community medicine. A strong proponent of multidisciplinary approaches to research, he supervised 43 masters and doctoral-level engineers.

Johnston played a major role in setting the standards for ac-