Dr Rainer Gruessner: A Nationally Accomplished and Respected Surgeon

Dr Rainer Gruessner is a humble and friendly man, and a casual encounter with him might leave the impression of a successful but rather ordinary man. Nothing, however, could be further from the truth.

Dr. Gruessner is a very accomplished surgeon who has performed many notable “firsts” in the fields of surgery and transplantation during the course of his career. He was involved in the world’s first split pancreas transplant in 1988, and he described and performed the first standardized technique for living donor intestinal transplants in 1997. In 2012, Dr Rainer Gruessner and his team performed the first robot-assisted total pancreatectomy with islet autotransplant.

Gruessner was appointed Chairman of the Department of Surgery at the University of Arizona’s College of Medicine in 2007, and served as the Surgical Director of the University’s Hepatopancreaticobiliary Program and the Surgical Director of the Abdominal Transplant Program. He is a tenured Professor of Surgery and Immunology. Dr Rainer Gruessner received his medical education in Europe, where he graduated in 1983. He was awarded a rare “summa cum laude “ for his Doctoral Thesis. At Philipps-Universität in Marburg, Germany, he completed his Professorial Thesis (“Habilitation”, the German PhD-equivalent). 

He completed a transplantation fellowship at the University of Minnesota in 1989. He moved on to be the Professor of Surgery and Chairman in the Department of General and Transplant Surgery at University Hospital in Zurich, Switzerland, and a tenured Professor of General and Transplant Surgery at the University of Minnesota, where he was also Vice Chair of the Department of Surgery.

Gruessner is a member of numerous prestigious professional societies, including the American Surgical Association, the Halsted Society, the Society of Surgical Chairs, the Transplantation Society and the Society of University Surgeons. He is a Board member for many professional journals, including Pancreatic Disorders and Therapy, the Journal of Investigative Surgery, Clinical Transplantation and Transplant International. He is also a devoted family man, and the proud father of two medical students.