The Mount Sinai Hospital admits its first patient on June 8, three days after opening its doors. The patient, a 42-year-old male with a fistula in-ano, required surgery, and went home five days later in good condition.

Arpad G. Gerster, MD, is named Chief of Mount Sinai’s Surgical Services, serving from 1882-1914. In 1888, he wrote the first book in the United States on aseptic and antiseptic principles. This is the first U.S. surgical textbook to use halftone photographs, most taken at Lenox Hill Hospital and The Mount Sinai Hospital.

Mount Sinai reports the first successful colectomy for colitis in the United States.

Sydney Yankauer, MD, physician at The Mount Sinai Hospital, performs the first successful removal of a foreign object via bronchoscopy in New York. He also develops Yankauer suction clamps, an endoscope and bronchoscope, ether anesthesia mask, and many other otolaryngeal operative instruments.

Mount Sinai is the first to describe the repair procedure for femoral hernia, a technique still in use today.

Leo Buerger, MD, at Mount Sinai, is the first to describe thromboangitis obliterans, also known as Buerger’s disease, a rare disease of the arteries and veins.

Charles Elsberg, MD, develops the first practical positive pressure anesthesia technique (endotrachial anesthesia), allowing Howard Lilienthal, MD, to perform drainage of an empyema.

Howard Lilienthal, MD, performs the first successful pulmonary resection for suppurative lung disease.

Richard Lewisohn, MD, introduces the citrate method of preserving blood, greatly simplifying transfusion and eliminating the need for direct donor-to-recipient transfusion.

Mount Sinai becomes the first institution in the United States to publish about gastrectomy for peptic ulcer disease.

Howard Lilienthal, MD, Mount Sinai Division Chief, publishes Thoracic Surgery, which goes on to become the standard reference work on the subject.

Leon Ginzburg, MD, Gordon Oppenheimer, MD, and Burrill B. Crohn, MD, all at Mount Sinai, are the first to describe regional ileitis, now known as Crohn’s disease.

Mount Sinai is the first to describe the one-stage procedure for drainage of putrid lung abscess. The paper becomes a classic in thoracic surgery.

Working together, Mount Sinai and Beth Israel Medical Center (then two separate hospitals) are the first to report the first survivors following litigation of an infected patent ductus arteriosus.

Mount Sinai notes the first successful resection of carcinoma of the middle third of the esophagus with reestablishment of continuity.

Mount Sinai establishes a self-help group of ileostomy and colostomy patients called the QT Club, which becomes the first-ever patient group for ostomates.

The Department of Surgery at Mount Sinai creates the Division of Plastic Surgery and opens a clinic.

The Department of Surgery creates the Divisions of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Surgery.

The Department of Surgery performs the first kidney transplant at Mount Sinai.

Mount Sinai is the first to show the association between estrogen receptors and obesity in breast cancer patients.

Mount Sinai is the first to note that peri-operative blood transfusion reduces immunity and leads to increased recurrence in colorectal malignancy.

Mount Sinai performs the first liver transplant in New York State.

The Department of Surgery forms one of the first academic divisions of laparoscopic surgery.

Michael Marin, MD, performs the first endovascular thoracic aneurysm surgery in the United States.

Dr. Marin performs the world’s first endovascular repair of a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm.

Mount Sinai creates an endovascular stent program.

Mount Sinai is the first in New York State to perform a single-incision laparoscopic splenectomy and cholecystectomy, removing the spleen and gallbladder of a patient completely through a one-inch incision hidden in the belly button.

A surgical team performs Mount Sinai’s first robotic-assisted transaxillary thyroidectomy.

The first transoral endoscopic thyroidectomy is performed at Mount Sinai.

Mount Sinai is the first in New York State to perform a kidney transplant on an HIV-positive patient.

The Mount Sinai Health System establishes the Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery, nationally recognized as “leaders in LGBT Healthcare Equality,” and completes the first vaginoplasty at Mount Sinai.

Mount Sinai is first in the United States to create a one-year Transgender Surgery Fellowship, directed by Jess Ting, MD.

Mount Sinai performs first robotic liver resection and first phalloplasty.

The doors open at the Kyabirwa Surgical Facility in Uganda, the Department of Surgery’s ambulatory global surgery center, to provide accessible, safe, and affordable health care in a rural setting, the first totally carbon neutral solar powered surgical centers in the country.

The first Robotic Whipple Procedure is performed at Mount Sinai.

The Department of Surgery (now the Ruth J. and Maxwell Hauser and Harriet and Arthur H. Aufses, Jr., MD Department of Surgery) completes the first histotripsy of liver tumor.