Gary S. Kopf, MD

Gary S. Kopf, MD, is a veteran cardiothoracic surgeon who has operated on thousands of infants, children and adults. With more than 30 years of experience, he is skilled in all types of cardiac surgery. In 2012, Dr. Kopf was part of the surgical team that inserted the first tissue-engineered blood vessel into a patient in the United States. The blood vessel was created from the cells of the patient, a young girl, and corrected a potentially fatal congenital heart defect. Dr. Kopf decided to become a cardiac surgeon because he wanted to have a favorable impact on people’s lives. “It is an interesting, rewarding and challenging field like no other in medicine,” he says. A professor of surgery (cardiac surgery) at Yale School of Medicine, he has an additional interest in biomedical ethics and is a member of the Pediatrics Ethics Committee at Yale New Haven Hospital and the End of Life Issues Study Group at the Yale Bioethics Center. He has been included in lists of America’s Top Doctors, New York’s Best Doctors and America’s Top Surgeons for many years.