Ralph J. Damiano

Dr. Ralph J. Damiano is a pioneer in the area of minimally invasive cardiac surgery. His developmental work on robotically assisted microsurgery for coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) earned him a ComputerWorld Smithsonian Award in June 1997. Damiano performed the first robotically assisted CABG procedure in North America in December 1998. He completed the first prospective clinical trial in the world on robotically assisted CABG and is the current President of the International society for...See more

Dr. Ralph J. Damiano is a pioneer in the area of minimally invasive cardiac surgery. His developmental work on robotically assisted microsurgery for coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) earned him a ComputerWorld Smithsonian Award in June 1997. Damiano performed the first robotically assisted CABG procedure in North America in December 1998. He completed the first prospective clinical trial in the world on robotically assisted CABG and is the current President of the International society for Minimally invasive Surgery. He has also been president of the Society of Clinical Surgery. He is one of the world pioneers in the surgical treatment of arrhythmias. His team at Washington University is world renowned for its clinical and basic research on the surgical treatment of atrial fibrillation. He has authored more than 250 scientific publications in the category of Medicine and is the top rated author of the top 100 in this research area by both scholarly output and citation count. His major contributions have been in the area of myocardial preservation during heart surgery, surgical electrophysiology and minimally invasive cardiac surgery. He has been associate editor of the Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery and is on nine other editorial boards. He has served as a member of the Surgery and Biomedical Engineering Study Section at the NIH. See less