Honorary Fellowship in the American College of Surgeons Is Awarded to Six Prominent Surgeons

Newswise — SAN FRANCISCO: Last night Honorary Fellowship in the American College of Surgeons (ACS) was awarded to six prominent surgeons from Switzerland, Scotland, Hong Kong SAR China, Argentina, Belgium, and Ecuador during the Convocation ceremony that preceded the official opening of the College’s 2014 Annual Clinical Congress. The granting of Honorary Fellowship is one of the highlights of the Clinical Congress, which is one of the largest international meetings of surgeons in the world. The recipients were as follows:
Prof. Pierre-Alain Clavien, MD, PhD, FACS, FRCS (Eng), FRCS (Ed)
Professor Pierre-Alain Clavien, Zurich, Switzerland, has made significant contributions to the understanding of basic mechanisms in liver disease, especially in the areas of organ preservation, ischemia reperfusion, liver regeneration, and cancer. After completing medical school and his surgical residency in Switzerland, Professor Clavien earned his PhD and completed a clinical fellowship in hepatobiliary and pancreatic (HPB) surgery at the University of Toronto. He served as head of transplantation and HPB surgery at Duke University before returning home to become the head of surgery at the University of Zurich. Professor Clavien introduced the American system of subspecialization in general surgery to Switzerland. He developed predictive scores for outcomes of liver operations and also developed the Clavien-Dindo classification system used for grading the severity of surgical complications. He also established the Swiss HPB Center, which focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of HPB diseases and draws patients from throughout Europe and the Middle East.
Prof. O. James Garden, CBE, MD, FRCS (Ed), FRCP (Ed), FRSE
Professor O. James Garden, Edinburgh, Scotland, is considered one of the preeminent specialists in hepatobiliary, pancreatic, (HPB) and liver transplantation surgery. He led the establishment of the Scottish Liver Transplantation Programme and performed the first successful liver transplant in Scotland in 1992. Professor Garden has also led the development of the Masters in Surgical Sciences (MSc) degree that forms part of the collaborative venture between the University of Edinburgh and the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. The MSc and the resulting series of distance learning programs in general surgery, trauma, orthopaedics, and urology received the national e-Learning Age award for Best Online or Distance Learning Programme-Education in 2010 as well as the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education in 2014. The programs now support and provide free academic surgical training for several trainees in disadvantaged parts of the world, including Malawi and Sierra Leone. Professor Garden is currently the Regius Professor of Clinical Surgery at the University of Edinburgh, the editor-in-chief of HPB Surgery, and chair of the British Journal of Surgery Society, Ltd. He was appointed Surgeon to the Queen of Scotland in 2004.
Prof. Chung-Mau Lo, MB, BS, FACS
Professor Chung-Mau Lo, Hong Kong, PRC, has been a successful surgeon, teacher, and investigator in the areas of hepatobiliary and transplant surgery. He has pioneered living related liver transplantation in Asia, and he and his team were the first to perform a right lobe living related transplant in 1996. Today, Professor Lo and his associates have performed more than 500 cases with excellent results. He has also made important contributions to the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma, and has made advances in early detection and use of adjuvant therapy. His novel anterior approach has improved technical advances of large tumors. Professor Lo was a principle force in founding and leading the new department of surgery at the University of Hong Kong-Shenzhen Hospital in China in 2012. As a prolific investigator, he has received more than $10 million in peer-reviewed grants studying liver graft injury. He has been a mentor for residents and fellows as well, aknd supervised nine PhD students studying areas like stem cell therapy for liver failure and genetic signatures as prognostic indicators for acute-phase hepatic injury and tumor invasiveness. Professor Lo has served as president of the International Liver Transplant Society and the International Society for Digestive Surgery.
Prof. Alberto Raul Ferreres, MD, PhD, MPH, FACS
Professor Alberto Raul Ferreres, Buenos Aires, Argentina, is an international leader in gastrointestinal and minimally invasive surgery, and medical and surgical ethics. He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Buenos Aires, and then trained in general surgery and surgical oncology at the University of Buenos Aires Hospitals before also earning degrees in law and in public health. He was an ACS International Guest Scholar in 1991 and trained in ethics at the University of Chicago (Ill.). He currently serves as professor of surgery and chairman, director of the general surgery residency training program at the Carlos Bocalandro Hospital and director of the Training Center for Minimally Invasive and Endoscopic Surgery at the University of Buenos Aires. In addition to all his surgical responsibilities and activities, Professor Ferreres has maintained an avid interest in public health policy and management, professional liability and patient safety and surgical error and has been the recipient of numerous scholarships and awards in these areas from the National Ministry of Health and the National Academy of Medicine in Argentina. Professor Ferreres has been elected to several surgical societies, both in Argentina and internationally. He has served as a visiting professor in the U.S., Canada, and Europe, and is President of the Argentina chapter of the American College of Surgeons (ACS). He is also president-elect of the International Society of Digestive Surgery (ISDS) and an Honorary Fellow of the American Surgical Association. He has published more than 100 scientific articles in peer reviewed journals, 25 book chapters and 3 textbooks of surgery.
Prof. Antoon (Toni) Lerut, MD, FACS, FACCP, FRCS (Eng) (Ire) (Hon), AFC (Hon), ASA (Hon)
Professor Antoon (Toni) Lerut, Leuven, Belgium, was attracted to thoracic and esophageal surgery during his training at the Catholic University of Leuven and after serving as a registrar in thoracic surgery in Bristol, UK. He completed a guest scholarship at the University of Chicago and University of Toronto, the latter stimulating his interest in lung transplantation. Professor Lerut quickly established his reputation as an excellent thoracic and esophageal surgeon in particular by publishing seminal contributions on esophageal cancer. Once he became a professor and head of general thoracic surgery at the university, Professor Lerut recruited younger bright surgeons to establish a leading European center in thoracic surgery and lung transplantation. He is the coeditor of Pearson’s Thoracic and Esophageal Surgery, the reference work in the field, and is currently the chair of the European Union of Medical Specialists Section of Thoracic Surgery. Professor Lerut has been awarded honorary fellowships in 14 prestigious organizations in the U.S. and Europe also confirming his reputation as a premier surgeon in his country. Since his retirement, he has been a visiting scholar at universities in the U.S., China, and Istanbul. He has also developed a teaching project to successfully treat children with caustic strictures in collaboration with doctors in Africa.
Prof. Edgar Rodas, MD, FACS
Professor Edgar Rodas, Cuenca, Ecuador, established a foundation for mobile surgery that brings advanced surgical services to the poor in remote parts of the country. Professor Rodas studied at the University of Cuenca before serving on a tour with Project HOPE (Health Opportunities for People Everywhere), an organization that works to make quality and sustainable health care available for people in other countries. Professor Rodas then completed his residency at Washington Hospital Center in Washington, DC, and returned to Cuenca to eventually become the university’s vice-rector. He established his foundation, Cinterandes, in 1990. It equips volunteer surgeons from Ecuador and abroad with evidence-based protocols to bring previously unavailable surgical techniques there, and has since performed thousands of procedures. Professor Rodas served as president of the Ecuadorian section of Amnesty International for two terms in 1990-1991 and 1997-1998. He also served as Minister of Health of Ecuador from 1998 to 2000. Professor Rodas also founded the medical school at the University of Azuay in Cuenca and served as dean from 2003 to 2009. For his dedication to improving surgical care in Equador, Professor Rodas received the ACS Surgical Humanitarian Award in 2009.
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Presenting the Honorary Fellowships last night on behalf of the College were: Steven M. Strasberg, MD, FACS, St. Louis; L. D. Britt, MD, MPH, FACS, FRCSEng (Hon), Norfolk, Va.; Ronald W. Busuttil, MD, PhD, FACS, Los Angeles; E. Christopher Ellison, MD, FACS, Columbus, Ohio; Richard J. Finley, MD, FACS, Vancouver, BC; and Ronald Merrell, MD, FACS, Mentone, Ala..
Fellowship in the American College of Surgeons is awarded during the Convocation ceremony to surgeons whose education and training, professional qualifications, surgical competence, and ethical conduct have passed a rigorous evaluation and have been found to be consistent with the high standards established and demanded by the College. During this year’s ceremony, 1,640 surgeons from around the world were admitted into Fellowship. With a membership of about 79,000, ACS is the largest organization of surgeons in the world.
Sir Rickman Godlee, President of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, was awarded the first Honorary Fellowship in the ACS during the College’s first Convocation in 1913. Since then, 447 internationally prominent surgeons, including the six chosen this year, have been named Honorary Fellows of the American College of Surgeons.
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