Dr. Rainer Gruessner is a highly dedicated and expert medical professional serving as surgeon in the realm of transplantation. He is 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 being involved 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 to perform a robot assisted total pancreatectomy with islet autotransplant in 2012. Rainer Gruessner obtained his medical degree and his medical thesis (“summa cum laude”) from the Johannes Gutenberg University School of Medicine in Mainz, Germany, in 1983. He obtained his professorial thesis (“Habilitation”) from the Philipps University in Marburg, Germany, in 1991. Rainer Gruessner did his residency at the Johannes Gutenberg University before completing a 2-year fellowship in transplantation surgery at the University of Minnesota. He also received clinical training in vascular surgery at Philipps University in Germany, and in living donor liver transplantation at Kyoto University in Japan. He is a member of the most prestigious surgical societies and has published over 600 manuscripts, abstracts and book chapters. received much of his education within the country of Germany at the Johannes Gutenberg University within the School of Medicine. He is the editor of 2 standard textbooks on transplant surgery.
Dr. Rainer Gruessner is the former Director the Hepatopancreaticobiliary Surgery Program at the University of Arizona. He is largely responsible for expanding not only the hepatopancreaticobiliary and transplant programs, but the Department of Surgery as a whole. He created three new divisions including various new clinical programs within the Department of Surgery. Dr. Rainer Gruessner also introduced robotic and minimally invasive procedures throughout all the surgical department’s subspecialties. He is credited with transforming a below-average Department of Surgery into one with a national reputation.
Dr Rainer Gruessner 