Teresa Kieser

Teresa M. Kieser, MD, PhD is a Cardiothoracic and Vascular (CVT) Surgeon at Foothills Medical Centre, the Libin Cardiovascular Institute, and Professor, Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary. She was board certified in General Surgery in Canada and USA in 1985 and in Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery in 1986 in Canada. Prior to this, her military service (Captain in the Canadian Armed Forces) included two years of Cardiology training (1977-1979) with Dr Gerald M. FitzGibbon of the ‘A, B, & O’ Graft patency classification for coronary grafts fame.

Immediately upon completion of residency and two Fellowships, in Jan 1988 she incepted the Cardiac Surgery Program at Foothills Medical Centre, University of Calgary performing the first heart surgery at Foothills on Sept 12, 1988. Her areas of interest include total arterial revascularization, predominantly with bilateral internal mammary arteries (BIMA), skeletonization with harmonic technology, and intraoperative assessment of graft patency with transit-time flow measurement (TTFM) and epicardial ultrasound (ECUS) as well as off-pump CABG. Her papers are referenced in multiple international guidelines from Europe, United Kingdom and North America.

She receives invitations to speak internationally as well as to operate and demonstrate surgical techniques of BIMA grafting such as in Harefield UK, Milan, Italy, Astana and Almaty, Kazakhstan, and Varna, Bulgaria. She defended her PhD thesis, ‘Building a Better Bypass with Emphasis on Bilateral Internal Mammary Grafting’, on Oct 8, 2015 at Erasmus University, Rotterdam under Prof. dr. A.P. Kappetein. She teaches for the European Association of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery (EACTS) Academy for Skills Programme Level 1 (Professional Sessions at Annual Meetings), Level 2 (the Fundamentals Courses in Windsor, England) and is a Level 4 instructor for visiting surgeons to Calgary from around the world to learn BIMA grafting techniques. Professor Kieser was recently awarded an Honorary Contract in the Cardiac Surgery Departments at the Royal Brompton and Harefield National Health Service Foundation Trust, United Kingdom to operate and teach surgical techniques.