Abstract of Recording

Dr. George E. Green is an innovator in the application of micro-suture techniques to coronary artery surgery. He is also the first American surgeon to perform a left coronary artery bypass graft using the internal thoracic artery sutured to the left anterior descending coronary artery to bypass obstruction to the heart circulation.  He developed these techniques in 1968, and in 1970 brought them to St. Luke’s Hospital to establish a cardiac surgery program that by 1982 was seeing approximately 1,800 cases a year - the biggest program in the state.

Transcript of George E. Green, MD interview (INT 0169)

Video Recording of George E. Green, MD interview (INT 0169)

Biographical Sketch

Dr. George E. Green was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY.  He attended Yale College and Yale Medical School.  He returned to New York to intern at Bellevue Hospital and complete a residency at Saint Vincent’s Hospital and the Veterans Administration Hospital. He also completed a residency in thoracic and cardiovascular surgery at New York University Medical Center.

Green began working with micro surgery techniques while working with Dr. Max Sones at Beth Israel Medical Center. Dr. Sones was looking for a better solution to the reconstruction of the esophagus post cancer treatment. In order to improve on the technique, Green introduced himself to Julius H. Jacobson, MD who was newly arrived at The Mount Sinai Medical Center, and was the first American to publish about using a surgical microscope to anastomose the smallest blood vessels. Green was given access to Jacobson’s lab to practice the same procedure.

In 1965, while presenting a paper on these procedures, Green met Donald B. Effler, MD, of the Cleveland Clinic, who was lecturing on the Vineberg Procedure, which was named for Arthur M. Vineberg, MD. Vineberg had successfully used the internal thoracic, or mammary, artery, to tunnel it into the heart muscle to establish collateral circulation to the coronary vessels. This meeting produced many trips to the Cleveland Clinic for Green, collaborating with those physicians, which eventually led to Green performing the ITA bypass procedure on a person.

In 1970, Dr. Green was hired to establish St. Luke’s Hospital cardiac surgery program, and by 1982 St. Luke’s was doing approximately 1,800 cases a year, which was the biggest program in the state.  In 1986 his work was verified by Dr. Airlie Cameron, who conducted a fifteen-year follow-up study of the coronary artery bypass surgery and presented documentation of improved survival rates with the internal thoracic artery compared with the saphenous vein bypass. The first of its kind, the study was published in 1986, with a 20-year follow-up study is published in 1995.

Curriculum Vitae of George E. Green, MD