Texas Children’s Hospital is proud to announce its second annual Distinguished Surgeon Award recipients. With this award, we honor leaders who forged a path of innovation in surgical excellence, research and education at Texas Children’s Hospital. Leadership in the Department of Surgery chose the recipients and announced this year’s winners May 8 at the department’s annual faculty dinner. A permanent installation honoring all Distinguished Surgeon Award recipients will soon be near the main OR on the third floor of Abercrombie.
This year’s Distinguished Surgeon Award winners are:
Dr. O.H. “Bud” Frazier
O. H. “Bud” Frazier is a pioneer in developing mechanical assist circulatory devices to treat severe heart failure, and a leader in the fields of heart transplantation and circulatory support. He has performed more than 1,200 heart transplants and implanted more than 700 left ventricular assist devices (LVADs), more than any other surgeon in the world. He is currently Chief, Center for Cardiac Support; Director, Cardiovascular Surgery Research; and Co-director, Cullen Cardiovascular Research Laboratories at Texas Heart Institute. Dr. Frazier was instrumental in helping Texas Children’s Hospital to develop a pediatric heart transplant service. When a six-month-old infant girl was dying of heart failure in 1984, Dr. Frazier proposed a procedure that had never before been done in an infant: a heart transplant. Dr. Frazier engineered obtaining a donor heart, and with lead surgeon, Dr. Denton Cooley, the two made history at Texas Children’s Hospital on November 11 of that year when they implanted a new heart into the infant’s chest. This surgery opened the way for heart transplants to be performed in small children.
Dr. Edmond T. Gonzales, Jr.
Dr. Edmond T. Gonzales, Jr. has been an integral part of the leadership and development in the Texas Children’s Hospital Department of Surgery, as well as a distinguished surgeon in the field of Pediatric Urology. Dr. Gonzales was the chief of Urology at Texas Children’s from 1974 to 2012. He was named Chief of Surgery serving from 1988 to 2010 and was the hospital’s first Surgeon-in-Chief, guiding surgical efforts from 2008 to 2010. He was then named the first Director of Surgery at Texas Children’s West Campus from 2010 to 2014. In his nearly 40 years at Texas Children’s, Dr. Gonzales has established a legacy of excellence for which the hospital and Baylor College of Medicine honored him by creating The Edmond T. Gonzales, Jr., MD, Chair in Pediatric Urology which he held from 2004 to 2012. A strong belief in advanced training for young surgeons led Dr. Gonzales to become a leader in the establishment and expansion of pediatric urology fellowship programs across the country. Together with a group of colleagues, he created an organized approach to selecting fellows and increasing the number of fellowships available. The American Urological Association manages fellowships today based on this work. As a result, pediatric urology fellowship positions have more than quadrupled since the early 1980s.
Dr. David E. Wesson
Dr. David E. Wesson is Associate Surgeon-in-Chief at Texas Children’s Hospital and Professor of Surgery and Pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine. Dr. Wesson is well known internationally for participating in some of the earliest definitive studies on the non-operative treatment of solid organ injuries in children. His research brought about a new method of treating splenic trauma nonoperatively, and resulted in this protocol becoming the standard of care not only for children but also for all age groups.
In 1997, Dr. Wesson was appointed chief of Pediatric Surgery at Texas Children’s, a position he held until 2012. After arriving at Texas Children’s, building a superior trauma program became a goal. He recruited pediatric surgical subspecialists with the ability to care for children with a broad spectrum of traumatic injuries and continues to serve as a mentor to trauma residents and fellows. He led the effort to attain Level I accreditation for the Texas Children’s Hospital Trauma Center, and he served as its director from 2007 to 2014. He was also instrumental in building other programs such as the Texas Children’s Fetal Center, bariatric surgery and surgical oncology.