Gabriel Loor, M.D., is an associate professor and the George P. Noon, M.D., Endowed Chair in Surgery in the Michael E. DeBakey Department of Surgery and surgical director of the Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center (BSLMC) Lung Transplantation Program. He is credited with the first “breathing lung transplantation” in the Midwest performed in 2014 and in Texas in 2018. Dr. Loor was the first surgeon in the U.S. to utilize portable ex vivo lung perfusion (EVLP) for a donation after cardiac death (DCD) lung transplantation in 2015. This set a new paradigm for the conduct of DCD lung and heart transplants. As principal investigator (PI) of the EXPAND Lung trial, he provided critical leadership that advanced the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval of the OCS EVLP device.
In his five-year tenure at Baylor, he has grown the Lung Transplantation Program to a total annual case volume of 73 over the past year – the highest ever for Baylor or BSLMC and currently the largest volume lung transplantation program in the Texas Medical Center. Among his many other accomplishments, he is the founding chair of the International Multicenter Extracorporeal Life Support (ECLS) in Lung Transplantation Registry – a key resource in the lung transplant community. Dr Loor is vice chair of the American College of Chest Physicians Section of Transplantation. He is also the PI and first implanter in Texas of the Abiomed Breethe compact extracorporeal membrane oxygenation unit for portable cardiopulmonary support.
Dr. Loor received his cardiac surgical and transplant training at the Cleveland Clinic where he received the Dr. Charles H. Bryan Annual Clinical Excellence Award in Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery. He received his general surgery training at the University of Chicago and his medical degree from Northwestern University. He was recruited to Baylor from the University of Minnesota, where he was director for lung transplant surgery. Among many awards and recognitions, he was Phi Beta Kappa and graduated magna cum laude at the University of Miami. Dr. Loor is the recipient of innumerable grants and awards and co-author of over 100 peer-reviewed publications, book chapters and invited commentaries and reviews. He was the principal editor of the David Sugarbaker Adult Chest Textbook, section of Lung Transplantation and Interstitial Lung Diseases. He has performed or participated in over 500 lung transplants in his career. He is active in Baylor’s adult cardiac surgery, the left ventricular support and heart transplant programs. He is an active researcher with several grants dedicated to the study of lung transplant and heart failure outcomes. He is a member of several professional societies including the American Association of Thoracic Surgeons, the Society of Thoracic Surgeons Task Force on Heart and Lung Failure, the Southern Society of Thoracic Surgeons and the International Society of Heart and Lung Transplantation. He is active on the board of several organizations including Nora’s Home, the principal affordable housing solution for transplant patients in the Texas Medical Center. He is a recipient of the Baylor College of Medicine STAR Faculty Award for Excellence in Patient Care.
