Dr. Rainer Gruessner: Former Chairman of the Department of Surgery

Dr. Rainer Gruessner is a highly dedicated and expert medical professional currently serving as a Professor of Surgery and Immunology at the University of Arizona. He is a trusted and accomplished surgeon, physician, and scientist devoted to helping patients with complex disorders of the pancreas, liver and small bowel. He is responsible for a number of firsts in the surgical world including his involvement in the first split pancreas transplant in 1988, he was the first to develop a standardized technique for living donor intestinal transplants in 1997, he was the first to perform a preemptive living donor liver transplant for oxalosis in 1998, he was the first to perform a laparoscopic living donor distal pancreatectomy and nephrectomy in 2000, and the first robot assisted total pancreatectomy with islet autotransplant in 2012. Rainer Gruessner received his medical education and his “summa cum laude” medical thesis from the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. He did his surgical residency at the same institution. He then moved on to the United States of America to complete a two year fellowship in transplant surgery at the University of Minnesota before moving back to Germany to receive additional clinical training in Vascular and General Surgery.

Dr. Rainer Gruessner is the former Chairman of the Department of Surgery at the University of Arizona. He held the position from 2007 to the current year of 2014 and was largely responsible for the complete rebuilding of the surgical department including the implementation of three new divisions along with numerous clinical programs. He also recruited over 60 new faculty members in order to substantially increase the operating room case volume. Dr. Rainer Gruessner introduced robotic and minimally invasive procedures throughout all Department of Surgery subspecialties allowing the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery to become one of the largest robotic surgery programs of its kind in the nation.