Bruce L. Gewertz, MD
Surgeon-in-Chief, Chair of the Department of Surgery and Vice President for Interventional Services
Bruce L. Gewertz, MD, is Surgeon-in-Chief, Chair of the Department of Surgery and Vice President for Interventional Services at Cedars-Sinai Health System.
Before joining Cedars-Sinai, Dr. Gewertz was the Dallas B. Phemister Professor and Chair of the Department of Surgery at the University of Chicago. He served as the first Faculty Dean of Medical Education at the University of Chicago, leading a revision of the undergraduate medical school curriculum with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. His recruitment of outstanding clinicians and surgical scientists to the University of Chicago allowed the department to increase its basic and clinical research funding more than three fold.
Dr. Gewertz's principal clinical and research interests include cerebrovascular disease (especially intraoperative neurophysiologic monitoring and outcome analysis), aortic aneurysmal disease, and mesenteric ischemic syndromes. His basic research into ischemia/reperfusion injury and endothelial cell physiology has been funded by the National Institute of Health and the American Heart Association. Recent work has focused on the cellular mechanisms leading to changes in microvascular permeability and studies of intracellular signaling by free radicals and cytokines.
Dr. Gewertz is the author of more than 200 original articles, book chapters and books including The Atlas of Vascular Surgery (Churchill Livingstone, 1993; Elsevier, 2005) and Surgery of the Aorta and Its Branches (W.B. Saunders, 2000).
Dr. Gewertz is Editor Emeritus of the Journal of Surgical Research, which he served as editor of from 1990 to 1998. He has served on the Editorial Board of Annals of Vascular Surgery (1985-2005) and the Journal of Vascular Surgery (1998-2004). A large number of invited and named lectureships throughout the years have addressed a broad range of topics in vascular disease and physiology as well as the challenges facing academic medicine.
He is consistently included among Best Doctors in America (Castle-Connolly, 2001-2007), Who's Who in America (1994-2007) and Who's Who in the World
(2000-2007).
Dr. Gewertz is a member of many national surgical organizations including the American Surgical Association, Society for Clinical Surgery, and the Central Surgical and Western Surgical Associations. Along with officer and executive committee positions in those organizations, he has served as President of the Chicago Surgical Society, the Association for Surgical Education and the Midwestern Vascular Surgical Society. He is a Director of the Vascular Surgery Board of the American Board of Surgery. Dr. Gewertz has participated nationally in the design and evaluation of resident and medical school activities through his leadership positions in the Association for Surgical Education and extensive involvement in the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) including the Advisory Panel on the Mission and Organization of Medical Schools (APMOMS) and the Forum on the Future of Academic Medicine. He chaired the recent AAMC Task Force on Integrating Teaching and Patient Care.
Dr. Gewertz has received numerous awards for his basic investigations and teaching. These include the Jobst Award for Vascular Surgery Research, the Coller Award from the Michigan Chapter of the American College of Surgeons, and the Teaching Scholars Award from the American Heart Association. He was selected Outstanding Science Alumnus by Pennsylvania State University in 2003.
Dr. Gewertz earned both a bachelor of science and a medical degree in a combined five-year program at Pennsylvania State University and Jefferson Medical College. After graduation, he trained in general and vascular surgery at the University of Michigan.
