For the 50 years of his career, Ernest Moore, MD, a distinguished professor of surgery, has been eager to go to work – not just caring for patients or the challenges of the operating room, but for the myriad paths of research he has pursued since he was an undergraduate.
Throughout his career, Moore has been not only a surgeon, but a surgeon-scientist who has delved into research on topics from the lethal triad of trauma-induced coagulopathy to the two-hit model of multiple organ failure, the role of enteral feeding in preventing lung failure, the mechanisms driving fibrinolysis shutdown, and the role of resuscitative endovascular balloon occlusion of the aorta in trauma resuscitation, among many dozen others. These basic science findings have led to changing paradigms in clinical care.
Moore, for whom the Ernest E. Moore Shock Trauma Center at Denver Health is named, recently was recognized by leading information analyst company Elsevier as being among the most-cited surgeon-scientists worldwide, and he has long been an advocate for surgeons in research. We recently discussed with him the importance of surgeons as scientists.