Two Fellows whose work in trauma and patient safety, respectively, changed the world, recently passed away.
Joseph Giordano, MD, FACS
Dr. Giordano, a retired trauma surgeon at George Washington (GW) University Hospital in Washington, DC, died on June 24 at 84 years old. He had a long and successful career as a practitioner and builder of healthcare capacity, but his most well-known accomplishment was saving the life of a US President.
On March 30, 1981, President Ronald Reagan was shot in the left chest, and Dr. Giordano assumed care for the President after he collapsed in the emergency room after walking in on his own. President Reagan was taken to the OR for a left anterolateral thoracotomy. The major intrathoracic structures were intact, and the bullet was retrieved 2.5 cm from the pericardium. A peritoneal lavage was negative, and the total operative time was 105 minutes. The President was discharged and returned to the White House 11 days later. (Read more on this surgery in the September 2024 Bulletin.)
The history-making effort of Dr. Giordano and the other care team members that day were made possible by the efforts of Dr. Giordano to create GW’s Level 1 trauma unit, which previously was nonexistent.
He was inducted into ACS Fellowship in 1979 and eventually became chair of the Department of Surgery at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences and a leader in Partner for Surgery, which sends physicians to provide care in impoverished parts of the world.
Lucian Leape, MD, FACS
Dr. Leape, a retired pediatric surgeon from Tufts University School of Medicine and chief of pediatric surgery at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts, passed away on June 30 at 94 years old. Dr. Leape, who became an ACS Fellow in 1968, is best known as an early investigator into medical errors, which eventually led to the creation of seminal publications on improving patient safety.
As he began noticing that frequent mistakes were leading to significant patient adverse events and even death, Dr. Leape left full-time surgical practice to collaborate with colleagues on a study that chronicled the number of medical patient injuries that occurred from medical errors. This study, and another paper by Dr. Leape, “Error in Medicine,” were antecedents to the landmark 1999 Institute of Medicine report, To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System.
To Err is Human estimated that between 44,000 and 98,000 individuals in the US died each year from medical errors—the majority of which were the consequence of flawed healthcare systems and no individual physician competence.
The report introduced the concept of system error to the world of medicine, against professional backlash, and is credited as an impetus for the creation of funding, programs, and overall attention to the importance of addressing preventable errors. Thousands of lives have been saved consequently.
Dr. Leape and his colleague’s work also echoed the surgical quality and patient safety efforts the ACS had led since its founding.
