Rainer Gruessner is a medical professional who has decades of experience in the field of transplantation and general surgery. It all started when he received his medical degree and thesis, “summa cum laude”, from the Johannes Gutenberg University School of Medicine in Mainz, Germany. He completed his professorial thesis(“Habilitation”, the German PhD equivalent)at the Philipps University in Marburg, Germany, in 1991. After his residency in general surgery he did a two-year fellowship at the University of Minnesota in transplantation surgery. He received special training in living donor liver transplantation at the Kyoto University in Japan.

Rainer Gruessner’s career following his extensive education yielded a number of significant developments in his field. In his early years, he was involved in the development of transanal endoscopic microsurgery techniques and demonstrated the superiority of abdominal sonography vs. peritoneal lavage in blunt abdominal trauma. After specializing in transplantation surgery, he was the first to do a preemptive living liver transplant for oxalosis in a baby in 1998. Also, he was involved in the first split pancreas transplant in 1988; he performed the first laparoscopic pancreas transplant biopsy in 1995; the first laparoscopic living donor distal pancreatectomy and nephrectomy in 2000; and the first robot assisted total pancreatectomy with islet autotransplant in 2012.Because of his many “firsts”, he is considered to be a pioneer in the introduction of minimal invasive and transplant techniques.

He has authored or co-authored over 600 book chapters, abstracts and publications; he has edited two standard textbooks and a third one on “Technological Advances in Surgery” is in the making. He is a member of over 20 professional societies including the American Surgical Association, the Halsted Society, the Society of University Surgeons and the American Society of Transplant Surgeons. He is a Fellow of both the American as well as the International College of Surgeons. He is also an Honorary Fellow of the European Board of Transplantation. And he serves as an Editorial Board member on many transplant and general surgery journals.

After his appointment as Chair of the Department of Surgery at the University of Arizona, he became an influential member of the School of Medicine.During his tenure, Rainer Gruessner was responsible for the complete overhaul and rebuilding of the school’s Department of Surgery. He recruited over 70 new faculty members, six of which were nationally recognized division chiefs who helped to substantially increase the case volume inthe operating rooms. Also, with his developments in noninvasive surgical methods, he helped make the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery one of the biggest robotic surgery programs in the country. With all of his accomplishments in his field, Dr. Rainer Gruessner has much to celebrate about such a successful career:he has been in surgical leadership positions for the past 16 years when he was associated with the University of Zurich, Switzerland, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Arizona.