Robert Bartlett, M.D.

Professor Emeritus of Surgery

Office of the Emeritus Faculty
1327 Jones Drive – Suite 201
Ann Arbor, MI 48105

Telephone: (734) 936-5822

Robert H. Bartlett, M.D.
Emeritus Professor of Surgery by
Regental Appointment December, 2005

Career

Dr. Bartlett received a B.A. from Albion College in 1960 and his M.D. with honors in 1963 from the University of Michigan Medical School. After completing his residency training at the Peter Bent Brigham and Children's Hospital in Boston and serving as a national Institutes of Health trainee in Academic Surgery at Harvard Medical School, he joined the faculty at the University of California Irvine as an Assistant Professor of Surgery. In 1980 he returned to the University of Michigan Medical Center as Director of Graduate Education, Director of Surgical Intensive Care and Chief of the Trauma/Critical Care Division. As Professor of Surgery in the Sections of General and Thoracic Surgery, he developed a Surgical Critical Care Fellowship and the Extracorporeal Life Support Program.

Accomplishments

Dr. Bartlett is best known for his development of ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation), treating the first infant in 1975. Since that time, thousands of infants have been saved by his bioengineering and clinical innovations. He is a nationally and internationally recognized as an extraordinary investigator with 26 separate research grants, 14 from the National Institutes of Health, including an RO1 grant for the development of a totally artificial lung. He received the American College of Surgeon's prestigious Sheen Award for Research and his contributions have also been recognized by numerous additional awards including a Medal of Special Recognition from the National Academy of Surgery of France, the McGraw Medal of the Detroit Surgical Association, Medallion for Scientific Achievement from the American Surgical Association and his election to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Science. Through Dr. Bartlett's tutelage, hundreds of general surgery residents and critical care fellows have developed into leaders in surgery.

Current Activities

Dr. Bartlett continues to maintain his active grant support and his cutting edge research including the development of an artificial liver system for use in patients awaiting liver transplant. Along with his long standing interest in medical history, Dr. Bartlett is a published fiction novelist.