Eugene Blackstone

Eugene Blackstone, MD, is full-time head of Clinical Investigations at the Sydell and Arnold Miller Family Heart, Vascular & Thoracic Institute at Cleveland Clinic, and staff member of the Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, Quantitative Health Sciences and Transplant Center. Dr. Blackstone is board-certified as Diplomate, National Board of Medical Examiners and as a Fellow, American College of Cardiology.

At Cleveland Clinic, Dr. Blackstone heads a multidisciplinary clinical research team focused on ischemic and valvar heart diseases, heart rhythm disturbances, heart failure (including transplantation, ventricular assist devices and alternatives to transplantation), and benign and malignant diseases of the esophagus and lungs. The research team consists of nearly 50 individuals, while approximately 180 projects are ongoing at any given time. Since 1993, at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and continuing at Cleveland Clinic, he has led a team of computer scientists in developing a novel semantic approach to data storage and use.

In addition to generating new knowledge from clinical experiences, his specialty interests include novel mathematical models for analysis of time-related and longitudinal clinical outcomes as well as novel algorithmic approaches, quasi-experimental study design, digital signal processing, mathematical process-control models of the circulatory system and semantic knowledge base/database technology.

Dr. Blackstone completed his undergraduate work at the University of Chicago. He received his medical degree from the University of Chicago School of Medicine, where he graduated with honors. Following medical school, he was awarded two concurrent fellowships from the University of Chicago in the Division of Thoracic Surgery in the School of Medicine. His postdoctoral studies continued under a fellowship from the U.S. Public Health Service and a research fellowship in mathematics, computer science and statistics from the Cardiopulmonary Surgical Research Laboratories at the University of Chicago, where he was a member of the Biological Sciences Computation Center.

Stemming from his signal processing work on pulmonary hypertension, Dr. Blackstone became one of a group of 100 scientists appointed to establish the field of digital signal processing. Dr. Blackstone completed his medical internship at the University of Alabama School of Medicine in Birmingham.

For three years, Dr. Blackstone served as a Major in the Medical Corps in the United States Army where he was Chief of the Cardiovascular Medicine Branch in the Aviation Medicine Research Division at Fort Rucker, Ala. He became a consultant to the Office of the Surgeon General, Department of the Army and to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration on Space Lab I, Space Lab II, and Orbital Flight Tests.

In 1980, Dr. Blackstone was appointed to an endowed university chair at UAB as Cardiovascular Surgical Research Professor of Surgery. A major culmination of Dr. Blackstone’s activities is the textbook Cardiac Surgery, now in its third edition.

Since 1987, Dr. Blackstone has been Associate Editor of the flagship journal The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery. In 2005, he became an editorial consultant for the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. He has published more than 500 articles and has received numerous awards, including the 2003 Maria and Sam Miller Professional Excellence Award for Scientific Achievement in Clinical Research and the University of Chicago Alumni Association Distinguished Service Award, Division of Biological Sciences in 1998.

Dr. Blackstone has been a visiting professor at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, the University Hospital in Umea, Sweden, the University of Toronto Hospital for Sick Children, and the International Heart School in Bergamo, Italy. He has held several academic appointments at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and is Professor of Surgery at the University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada and faculty at Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine.

He holds many memberships, including the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association.

Dr. Blackstone is an organist and a pianist, with a 68-rank, 4-manual pipe organ in his home.

Education & Professional Highlights

Appointed
1997

Additional Training

Postdoctoral Fellow, U.S. Public Health Service, Department of Surgery, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 1966-1968
E.F. Andrews Fellow, Division of Thoracic Surgery, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 1966
Douglas Smith Fellow, Division of Thoracic Surgery, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 1966
Postdoctoral Studies, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 1966-1968

Professional Highlights

The Kenny Gee and Paula Shaw, Ph.D. Chair in Heart Research, 2007
Maria and Sam Miller Professional Excellence Award for Scientific Achievement in Clinical Research, 2003
Associate Editor, Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, 1987-1994; 1998 to present
Editorial Consultant, Journal of the American College of Cardiology, July 1, 2005-June 30, 2007
Head, Clinical Investigations, Heart, Vascular & Thoracic Institute

Specialty Interests

Adult and congenital cardiac surgery, Adult thoracic surgery, Comparative Effectiveness Research

Awards & Honors

University of Chicago Alumni Association Distinguished Service Award, Division of Biological Sciences, 1998
Maria and Sam Miller Professional Excellence Award, Scientific Achievement Award in Clinical Research, 2003
The Kenny Gee and Paula Shaw, Ph.D. Chair in Heart Research, 2007
Awarded NIH Grant 1U01HL088955-01. The major goal of the Cleveland Clinic Cardiothoracic Collaborative Clinical Center (C⁶) is to participate fully in each clinical protocol as a priority in a Network for Cardiothoracic Surgical Investigations in Cardiovascular Medicine as both a Clinical Center and a Clinical Research Skills Development Core.
Awarded NIH Grant HL-072772-01.The major goals of this project are to develop novel survival analysis methods for analyzing large survival databases. Our application focuses on 5 cardiac databases related to various cardiac surgery treatments.

Innovations & Patents

SemanticDB: Innovative data store for disparate data facilitating research
Temporal decomposition for longitudinal data

Memberships

Alpha Omega Alpha
American Association for Thoracic Surgery
American College of Cardiology
American Heart Association
Congenital Heart Surgeons Society

Research & Publications

See publications for Eugene Blackstone.

(Disclaimer: This search is powered by PubMed, a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. PubMed is a third-party website with no affiliation with Cleveland Clinic.)

Industry Relationships

Cleveland Clinic physicians and scientists may collaborate with the pharmaceutical or medical device industries to help develop medical breakthroughs or provide medical expertise or education. Cleveland Clinic strives to make scientific advances that will benefit patient care and support outside relationships that promise public benefit. In order for the discoveries of Cleveland Clinic physicians' and scientists' laboratories and investigations to benefit the public, these discoveries must be commercialized in partnership with industry. As experts in their fields, Cleveland Clinic physicians and scientists are often sought after by industry to consult, provide expertise and education.

To assure professional and commercial integrity in such matters, Cleveland Clinic maintains a program that reviews these collaborations and, when appropriate, puts measures in place to minimize bias that may result from ties to industry. Cleveland Clinic publicly discloses the names of companies when (i) its physicians/scientists receive $5,000 or more per year (or, in rare cases, equity or stock options) for speaking and consulting, (ii) its physicians/scientists serve as a fiduciary, (iii) its physicians/scientists receive or have the right to receive royalties or (iv) its physicians/ scientists hold any equity interest for the physician's/scientist's role as inventor, discoverer, developer, founder or consultant.* In publicly disclosing this information, Cleveland Clinic tries to provide information as accurately as possible about its physicians' and scientists' connections with industry.

As of 7/21/2023, Dr. Blackstone has reported the financial relationships with the companies listed below. In general, patients should feel free to contact their doctor about any of the relationships and how the relationships are overseen by Cleveland Clinic. To learn more about Cleveland Clinic's policies on collaborations with industry and innovation management, go to our Integrity in Innovation page.

Donation of Financial Interest. Dr. Blackstone has consulted for, received compensation for serving as a fiduciary from, or received royalties from the following companies but instructed them to donate all compensation to not-for-profit causes or to the Cleveland Clinic to support research and education:

ABIOMED, Inc.

Public Health Service-Reportable Financial Conflicts of Interest. Cleveland Clinic scientists and physicians engage in basic, translational and clinical research activities, working to solve health problems, enhance patient care and improve quality of life for patients. Interactions with industry are essential to bringing the researchers' discoveries to the public, but can present the potential for conflicts of interest related to their research activities. Click here to view a listing of instances where Cleveland Clinic has identified a Public Health Service (PHS)-Reportable Financial Conflict of Interest and has put measures in place to ensure that, to the extent possible, the design, conduct and reporting of the research is free from bias.

* Cleveland Clinic physicians and scientists subscribe to the guidance presented in the PhRMA Code on Interactions with Healthcare Professionals and the AdvaMed Code of Ethics on Interactions with Health Care Professionals. As such, gifts of substantial value are generally prohibited.

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About Eugene Blackstone