Even as a medical student, at Tufts University, in Boston, Dr. Thomas J. Berger knew he wanted to be a heart surgeon. He spent four months of his senior year in Houston, Texas, where he scrubbed with Dr. Michael DeBakey and also trained with Dr. Robert D. Leachman, cardiologist to Dr. Denton Cooley. After medical school, Dr. Berger spent seven years in general and cardiac surgery residencies and research, with his mentor, Dr. John Kirklin. Dr. Kirklin is the internationally revered pioneer of open-heart surgery, who was the first surgeon ever to begin operating on a routine basis with a heart-lung machine. Before completing his training, Dr. Berger contributed to the writing of Dr. Kirklin’s widely respected textbook, Cardiac Surgery.

After completing his training, Dr. Berger served his country for two years as a staff cardiac surgeon, at the Naval Regional Medical Center, in San Diego, where he was awarded the Navy Achievement Medal for, “Displaying exceptional technical skill in the field of open-heart surgery.”

In 1980, Dr. Berger started his own heart surgery program in a small town in Montana, where heart surgery had never before been done. He helped to design the operating room and ICU, from the blueprint stages; trained nurses and technicians, who had never treated heart surgery patients before; and set up “patient management programs” to assure consistency and excellence. Such standardization of care did not come into general use, as “care paths,” until decades later. By 1990, the program he had started was recognized in the Wall Street Journal as being tied for the lowest mortality in the nation, for Medicare coronary bypass patients.

In 1997, Dr. Berger returned to academic medicine, as Chief of, not only cardiac surgery, but all surgery, at a Duke affiliated hospital, where he held the academic appointment of Associate Consulting Professor of Surgery, with Duke University Medical Center. In this position, Dr. Berger was responsible for the training of Duke residents and fellows, in cardiac surgery and other surgical sub-specialties, when they rotated through his hospital.

Currently, due a medical problem with his vision, which does not permit him to operate, Dr. Berger is not in the active practice of cardiac surgery. Although he is currently on the staff of a local hospital as a surgical consultant, he devotes his time primarily to his very busy practice of forensic medicine, working to assure that the truth is uncovered and understood in every case, in which he becomes involved.

If your state requires that an expert be in active practice, one of Dr. Berger’s associates, an Assistant Consulting Professor of Surgery, with Duke University Medical Center and chief of cardiac surgery at a Duke affiliated hospital, will do a superb job as your expert. This Duke trained, cardiac and thoracic surgeon, is a senior associate of Heart of the Matter Expertise, with a rapidly growing experience, over the past several years, in forensic consultation and testimony.

When Dr. Berger receives your client’s medical records, he will devote the same intense concentration and effort to their detailed evaluation as he did in the operating room to a beating heart held in his hands.