Russell M. Nelson

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Nelson served a two-year term of duty in the U.S. Army Medical Corps during the Korean War, and was stationed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. While on duty, he was assigned to a research group formed by the commandant of the graduate school at Walter Reed, Col. William S. Stone and led by Dr. Fiorindo A. Simeone, a professor of surgery at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland who had been a clinical investigator in the Mediterranean Theater during World War II. This team was focused on ways to improve the treatment of wounded and was sent to all five MASH units active in Korea along with two major evacuation hospitals, several field station hospitals, a prisoner of war camp and larger evacuation hospitals in Japan, Hawaii, and the mainland United States in order to implement such improvements. At one point, the team came close enough to the front that they received fire from enemy artillery positions, which missed them. After 20 months in service, he left active duty at the rank of captain. Following his military service, he did a year of work and surgical training at Massachusetts General Hospital.

In 1955, Nelson returned to Salt Lake City and accepted a faculty position at the University of Utah School of Medicine. There he built his own heart-lung bypass machine and employed it to support the first open-heart surgery in the United States west of the Mississippi River. That operation was performed at the Salt Lake General Hospital (SLGH, now University of Utah Hospital) on an adult with an atrial septal defect. Nelson was also the director of the University of Utah thoracic surgery residency program.

In March 1956, he performed the first successful pediatric cardiac operation at the SLGH, a total repair of tetralogy of Fallot in a four-year-old girl. He was at the forefront of surgeons focusing attention on coronary artery disease, and contributed to the advance of valvular surgery as well. In 1960, he performed one of the first-ever repairs of tricuspid valve regurgitation. His patient was a Latter-day Saint stake patriarch. He also provided the first surgical intervention for tricuspid regurgitation, a disorder that allows blood to flow backward into the right upper heart chamber. In an indication of his surgical skill, a 1968 case series of his aortic valve replacements demonstrated an exceptionally low peri-operative mortality. Later, he performed the same operation on future LDS Church president Spencer W. Kimball, replacing his damaged aortic valve. In 1985, Nelson along with his colleague, Conrad B. Jenson, performed a quadruple bypass surgery on the Chinese opera performer Fang Rongxiang (1925–1989).

Nelson first operated out of the University of Utah's medical school. He later had a practice at the Salt Lake Clinic with admission privileges at LDS Hospital. In 1964, he set up his own private practice with him as the lead and Conrad Jenson as an associate. In 1966, Nelson became head of the thoracic residency program that combined resources from the University of Utah Medical School, LDS Hospital, Primary Children's Hospital and the VA Hospital in Salt Lake City.

In 1965, the University of Chicago offered Nelson the position as head of their department of thoracic surgery. Dallin H. Oaks, then a law professor at Chicago and a fellow Latter-day Saint, actively worked to recruit Nelson. However, after consulting with David O. McKay, Nelson turned down the offer.

Nelson became involved with the administrative aspects of medicine and was elected president of the Utah State Medical Association. He was chair of the Division of Thoracic Surgery at LDS Hospital.

In 1981, Nelson held appointments as a visiting professor of surgery at the National Institute of Cardiology in Mexico City and the Catholic University in Santiago, Chile. In May 1982 he was a visiting professor at the Hospital de Clinicas in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Nelson was honored nationally by being elected president of the Society for Vascular Surgery for the year 1975. He was also a director of the American Board of Thoracic Surgery. Nelson traveled extensively as a medical doctor and addressed conferences in many parts of Latin America and Africa, as well as in India and China. He performed a total of nearly 7,000 operations before his call to be an apostle.

In 2015, the University of Utah, along with the American College of Cardiology, created the Russell M. Nelson MD, PhD Visiting Professorship in Cardiothoracic Surgery.

Source

• President of the Thoracic Surgical Directors Association
• President of the Society for Vascular Surgery (1975)
• President of the Utah State Medical Association
• Director of the American Board of Thoracic Surgery
• Chairman of the Council on Cardiovascular Surgery for the American Heart Association
• Chairman of the Division of Thoracic Surgery at the LDS Hospital
• Vice-chairman of the board of governors at the LDS Hospital
• "Citation for International Service", American Heart Association
• "Heart of Gold Award", American Heart Association
• "Golden Plate Award", American Academy of Achievement
• "Distinguished Alumni Award", University of Utah
• "Surgical Alumnus of the Year Award", University of Minnesota Medical School
• "Governor's Medal of Science: Lifetime Achievement Award", Utah Technology Innovation Summit
• "Advocate of the Arts" award presented by the Inspirational Arts Association.