Rainer Gruessner: Esteemed Medical Professional and Surgeon Rainer Gruessner has been dedicating his life to the advancement of surgery and its practice since 1983. His career has been chalked full of medical achievements, giving him high status among his peers in the field. It is rare that you meet a surgeon with as much experience and documented clinical success as Rainer Gruessner. Rainer Gruessner has achieved much over the course of his career, including numerous clinical firsts in surgery. He was involved in the first split pancreas transplant in 1988; he describeded the first standardized technique for living donor intestinal transplants in 1997,; he performed the first preemptive living donor liver transplant for oxalosis in 1998, the first laparoscopic living donor distal pancreatectomy and nephrectomy in 2000, and the first robot-assisted total pancreatectomy with islet autotransplant in 2012. He has been awarded for his dedicated service and innovative work. In 2009, he received the Innovation Award from the University of Arizona; in 2011, he was awarded the title of Physician of the Year by the Pima County Medical Association, and in 2012, received the Diabetes Cure Award by the Arizona Chapter of the American Diabetes Association. Rainer Gruessner has received various grants over the years to conduct his studies and projects, ranging from as little as $15,000 to as much as $3 million, and spanning a variety of topics, including the Portable Gas Perfusion System for Pancreas Preservation, Diabetes Prevention and Management, and the Hibernating State and Ischemia Reperfusion Injury in Organ Preservation. He has served as mentor to numerous trainees and advisees that now hold academic positions. 27 Transplant Fellows from the University of Minnesota and 37 Chief Residents from the University of Arizona’s Department of Surgery have trained under Rainer Gruessner. Rainer Gruessner is also an accomplished author and participant written academia. He has published two textbooks, over 300 manuscripts, over 80 book chapters, over 200 abstracts, over 500 meeting presentations, and has been an invited lecturer and visiting professor over 140 times. His textbooks focus on the transplantation of the pancreas, spanning over 675 pages, and living donor organ transplantation, spanning over 790 pages. He is the former Chairman of the University of Arizona’s Department of Surgery, former professor of Surgery and Immunology, and Chief of Transplantation. Rainer Gruessner has studied and practiced surgery around the world. He obtained his medical degree and his medical thesis (“summa cum laude”) from the Johannes Gutenberg University School of Medicine in Mainz, Germany, in 1983. He obtained his professorial thesis (“Habilitation”) from the Philipps University in Marburg, Germany, in 1991. Rainer Gruessner did his residency at the Johannes Gutenberg University before completing a 2-year fellowship in transplantation surgery at the
University of Minnesota. He also received additional clinical training in vascular, endocrine and general surgery at Philipps University in Germany, and in living donor liver transplantation at Kyoto University in Japan. He went on to become Chairman of the Department of Surgery at the University of Zurich and the University of Arizona. He has been in surgical leadership positions for over 15 years.