Dr. Kenneth Mattox

Join Virtually ===> January 16, 2025

Kenneth L. Mattox, M.D., is one of the most recognized surgeons around the world. He is Distinguished Service Professor of the Michael E. DeBakey Department of Surgery at Baylor College of Medicine and Chief of Staff/Chief of Surgery at the Ben Taub Hospital, Houston, Texas. He helped develop the internationally renowned Ben Taub General Hospital Emergency Center and its equally respected Trauma Center. His reputation as an innovator in trauma care is worldwide. He has made original and significant contributions in trauma resuscitation, trauma systems, thoracic trauma, vascular injury, autotransfusion, complex abdominal trauma and multi-system trauma. His research in preoperative fluid restriction for penetrating trauma shook the foundation of surgical doctrine in this area. His textbook, Trauma, is an international best seller, now in its 8^th edition, and he is co-editor of the Sabiston’s Textbook of Surgery, recognized throughout the world. He is co-editor of the second edition of Rich’s Vascular Trauma. A fifth book, History of Surgery in Houston, recounts the last 50 years of Houston’s impressive and colorful surgical heritage. He co-authored the unique, international best seller, Top Knife, a practical guide to trauma care, translated into nine foreign languages. He frequently receives emails from physicians in war zones who refer to this “little book” as their Bible in the OR.

Authoring over 600 articles and more than 1,000 abstracts, he has also served on six Editorial Boards and has been an Editorial Reviewer for 15 other journals. He has been a visiting professor or consultant to more than 800 medical schools, hospitals or health care systems throughout the world. For the past eighteen years, he has been Program Director of the Las Vegas Trauma, Critical Care, and Acute Care Surgery Course, the best attended and most acclaimed trauma conference in the world. In 2008, he added the directorship of another international conference to his “docket,” Medical Disaster Response. In its inaugural year, the course sold out. Doctor Mattox is a member of over 30 professional organizations and is Past President of the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma, Past Secretary-Treasurer of the Michael E. DeBakey International Surgical Society, and Past President of the Houston Surgical Society and Texas Surgical Society. He also served as Vice President of the American College of Surgeons and the American Surgical Association.