Plastic surgery pioneer Bernard Sarnat, MD, dies at 99
Pioneering plastic surgeon Bernard Sarnat, MD, DDS, passed away Oct. 21, in Los Angeles. He was 99.
A Maliniac Fellow and founding member of the Plastic Surgery Research Council, Dr. Sarnat studied craniofacial development and the biological circumstances that led to deformities of the facial structures, especially as they affect surgical procedures. The author or co-author of more than 220 scientific journal papers and books, Sarnat lectured extensively at universities and professional societies throughout the United States and the world.
A child of Russian immigrants, Dr. Sarnat was born in 1912 in Chicago, where he earned medical and dental degrees before moving to St. Louis in 1943 for training in the emerging field of plastic surgery, under the tutelage of renowned maxillofacial surgeon Vilray Blair, MD. Dr. Sarnat would eventually move to Los Angeles in the 1950s and joined the UCLA School of Dentistry in 1969 as an adjunct professor of oral biology. In 1974, he received a joint appointment in the UCLA School of Medicine's division of plastic surgery. He also operated a private practice as a plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills and was associated with Cedars-Sinai Medical Center for more than 20 years, first as chief of plastic surgery and later as a senior research scientist.
"Dr. Bernard Sarnat was a true surgeon-scientist," says James Bradley, MD, professor of plastic surgery and holder of the Bernard G. Sarnat, M.D., Endowed Chair in Craniofacial Biology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. "His quest to answer questions in the field of craniofacial biology led to landmark discoveries that are used to benefit countless children today."
In the essay "As I Remember: Becoming a Plastic Surgeon and My Three Years (1943 to 1946) with the Vilray P. Blair Group" published in the March 2003 issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Dr. Sarnat reflects on his introduction to the lab while in dental school with his mentor Isaac Schour, DDS, PhD: "He was the ideal role model and mentor: his values, his ethics, his scholarship, his philosophy are what I tried to emulate. I chose wisely. I would be in the research laboratory during all of my free time, which sometimes meant 24-hour days, seven days a week. I was a very busy fellow. What I treasured most were Saturday afternoons, when only the two of us were in the laboratory and we would organize and write up our research material and discuss other more expansive matters."
After World War II, he pioneered an early model of distance-education by setting up a telephone network to simultaneously broadcast a series of lectures on dental topics to 260 cities and more than 12,000 students.
Dr. Sarnat retired from surgical practice in 1991 but was still working hard through early 2010 to publish his book Craniofacial Biology and Craniofacial Surgery (World Scientific Publishing Co., 2010), which encompasses more than 60 years of basic science discovery. As recently as spring 2011, he was still in his office, putting the finishing touches on academic works.
Dr. Sarnat died just short of his 70th wedding anniversary, which would have been Christmas Day.
He is survived by wife, Rhoda, of Los Angeles; son Gerry of Portola Valley, Calif.; daughter Joan of Berkeley, Calif.; grandchildren Zoe, Eli and Emma Sarnat, and Jascha and Michael Hoffman; and great-grandchildren Elliot and Simon Aron.
SOURCES: PRS, UCLA Newsroom
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