Pierre-Alain Clavien, MD, PhD, FACS (hon), ASA (hon), FRCS (Eng), FRCS (Ed), is a worldwide renowned surgeon-scientist, currently professor and chairman of the Department of Surgery in Zurich, Switzerland. After a swiss board of surgery in 1989, he moved to Toronto, Canda, to complete a PhD program in organ preservation followed by a clinical fellowship in liver/pancreas surgery and liver transplantation. He then moved to Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, where he initially led the liver transplantation and HPB programs, and subsequently the division of Transplantation.
His main interests are the various aspects of transplantation and liver surgery. Since 1994, he has been running an active basic science laboratory, areas of research include organ preservation, liver ischemia-reperfusion injury and liver regeneration, the pathogenesis of cancer as well as outcome research with publications in Science, Nature, PNAS, Annals of Surgery, Gastroenterology, Lancet and NEJM (The New England Journal of Medicine).Â
His group made the discovery of serotonin as a key mediator of liver regeneration and successfully transplanted the 1st human liver preserved for several days in a novel ex vivo normothermic machine perfusion. He also developed a simple and widely used classification to evaluate complications after surgery, which holds his name, and subsequently a metric for morbidity, which includes all complications by severity (Comprehensive Complication Index, CCI). The impact of his research is highlighted with an H-factor of 140. He has been president of the European Surgical Association (ESA) and European Hepatobiliary Association (E-AHPBA).
He is currently on the Editorial Board or Associate Editor of several high-ranked international journals, such as Associate Editor of Journal of Hepatology and of the Annals of Surgery. Dr. Clavien received the honorary fellowship of the American College of Surgeons (ACS) and of the American Surgical Association (ASA). He was also appointed an honorary member of the Académie Nationale de Médecine in France.
He received the most prestigious prizes for scientific achievement in Switzerland, the Otto Naegeli Award 2008, and the UEGW (European Union of Gastroenterology) Award. He has also written several books including the popular Atlas of upper GI-HPB surgery. Dr. Clavien joined the National Academy of Medicine (USA) in 2020.