NCVH Lifetime Achievement Award Honorees

2012 - Frank J. Veith, MD

Dr. Veith graduated from Cornell University Medical School with Honors before completing an internship at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in New York and his surgical residency training at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Veith achieved success with his pioneering work in experimental and clinical lung transplantation.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Dr. Veith’s attention turned toward Vascular Surgery with an emphasis on lower extremity revascularization procedures. He and his colleagues were the first to advocate an aggressive approach to saving limbs threatened by arteriosclerosis and gangrene when most patients with this problem were being treated by a major amputation. In the late 1980s and early1990s Dr. Veith became increasingly involved with endovascular treatments. He and his group were the first to perform an endovascular graft repair of an abdominal aortic aneurysm or EVAR in the United States. They also were the first in the world to perform an EVAR for a ruptured abdominal aneurysm. Dr. Veith has held positions in every national vascular society and many international ones.

In 1995 he was elected President of the Society for Vascular Surgery, the most prestigious society in the field. He has been a leading advocate for the recognition of Vascular Surgery as a separate and distinct specialty and is the past Chairman of the American Board of Vascular Surgery. Dr. Veith held positions as Chief of Vascular Surgery and Interim Chairman of Surgery at Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine for many years. In the last five, he was The William J. Von Liebig Chair in Vascular Surgery and the Vice Chairman of the Department of Surgery. Throughout his career he has received numerous awards and honors as a leader, outstanding teacher and innovator in Vascular Surgery.

He is now Professor of Surgery and The William J. von Liebig Chair in Vascular Surgery at the Cleveland Clinic and Professor of Surgery at New York University Medical Center. As he has done for many years, Dr. Veith also chairs the largest Vascular Surgery meeting, the VEITHsymposium, held annually in New York City.