Kareem Abu-Elmagd’s biography, fact, career, awards, net worth and life story

Kareem Abu-Elmagd (born June 16, 1952) is an Egyptian-American surgeon practicing abdominal organ transplantation and digestive system surgery. He is best known for development of clinical intestinal and multivisceral transplantation and its approval by the American government as the standard of care for patients with gut failure.

Early life and education

Abu-Elmagd was born in Mansoura city the capital of Dakahlia Governorate in 1952. In 1976 he obtained his medical degree and trained surgery at school of medicine Mansoura University. In 1987 earned his PhD in liver diseases and portal hypertensive surgery through a joint collaboration between Emory University in Atlanta and Mansoura University. In 1989, joined University of Pittsburgh to get clinical fellowship in transplantation surgery.

Medical career

Abu-Elmagd worked closely for a long time during his medical career with surgeons Farouk A. Ezzat, W. Dean Warren, and Thomas E. Starzl.

With more than 400 peer review scientific publications, his work has been cited 16728 times between 2009 and 2017.
In 1989, he was introduced to the field of organ transplantation by the late professor Thomas E. Starzl, the father of modern transplantation after that in 1990, Abu-Elmagd and his colleagues launched an intestinal and multivisceral transplant program which performed more than 450 intestine transplants surgery. He is also known for His contribution to the clinical introduction of the immunosuppressive drug “FK-506” “currently known as Tacrolimus” and the concept of gut rehabilitation with novel autologous surgical techniques particularly in patients with complex abdominal pathology and congenital anomalies.
Now Abu-Elmagd is professor of surgery at Case-Western Reserve University and the director of the gut rehabilitation and transplantation center at Cleveland clinic.

Notable Medical Achievements

Abu-Elmagd’s most notable achievements include:

• Key role in performing the first successful intestinal transplantation under tacrolimus in 1990 at the University of Pittsburgh
• Participating in the establishment of the clinical utility of tacrolimus in 1991
• Demonstration of the immune-protective effect of the concomitantly transplanted liver and the deleterious effect of DSA on the visceral allograft.
• Establishment of the Medicare coverage for intestinal and multivisceral transplant in the United States in year 2000.
• The founder of “Kareem Abu-Elmagd Transplant and Gut Foundation” with establishment of a dedicated national institute to enhance patients care, clinical training, medical education and research in Egypt.
• The pioneer of a new procedure to correct intestinal malrotation in children and adults replacing the historic Ladd’s procedure. This procedure corrects any abnormal placement of the intestines and organs associated to the digestive tract.
• Defining, for the first time, the different types of gut failure after bariatric surgery with the introduction of innovative autologous reconstructive surgical techniques.
• Introduced innovative reconstructive surgical techniques utilizing the patient’s own gut for the effective management of gut failure eliminating the need for intravenous nutrition commonly called TPN. An algorithm with a predictive model was established to guide  clinicians, health care providers, payors  and above all patients to achieve the best and most cost effective outcome eliminating the need for gut transplantation