Steven D. Wexner

Steven D. Wexner is an American surgeon and physician. He is Director of the Digestive Disease Center at Cleveland Clinic Florida, where he has worked since 1988. He has received numerous regional, national, and international research awards. Through his multiple academic appointments, Wexner personally trains 15-20 surgeons each year, and he educates thousands more around the world through conferences and lectures. However he also maintains a clinical practice and continuing research. In 2020 he was elected Vice-Chair of the Board of Regents of the American College of Surgeons. He also serves as Symposium Director of the Annual International Colorectal Disease Symposium, held each year in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Education.
Dr. Wexner received his bachelor's degree from Columbia University in 1978. He earned his MD in 1982 from Weill Cornell Medicine. He completed a general surgery residency in 1987 at Roosevelt Hospital (now Mount Sinai West). In 1988 he completed a fellowship in colon and rectal surgery at the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis, MN.
Career.
In 1993, Dr. Wexner was named Chairman of the Department of Colorectal Surgery at Cleveland Clinic Florida. While at Cleveland Clinic he also served as Chairman of the Division of Research and Education from 1996 to 2007, as well as Chief of Staff from 1997 to 2007. He served as Chief Academic Officer from 2007 to 2012. In 2012 He was appointed the Director of the Digestive Diseases Center.
Dr. Wexner holds academic appointments as Affiliate Professor at Florida Atlantic University; Clinical Professor at Florida International University; Affiliate Professor of Surgery at the University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida; Professor of Surgery at the Ohio State University; Clinical Professor of Surgery at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University; Affiliate Professor of Surgery at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine; Professor of Surgery, University of Siena, Siena, Italy; Visiting Professor, Faculty of Medicine, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Hadassah Medical Center, Jerusalem, Israel; and Visiting Professor at the University of Belgrade in Serbia.
Dr. Wexner is one of the founders of the National Accreditation Program for Rectal Cancer (NAPRC). The accreditation program was formed in 2017 with the American College of Surgeon's Commission on Cancer to implement nationwide educational and medical standards for the best treatment of rectal cancer.
Innovation and research.
In an interview with Local 10, Dr. Wexner shared that he has been seeing a higher frequency of colorectal cancer in younger patients, due to genetic drift as well as environmental and dietary factors. This is often misdiagnosed until the disease has become advanced, and so Dr. Wexner recommends beginning regular colonoscopy screenings earlier than guidelines currently advise.
J-Pouch Procedures.
Much of Dr. Wexner's work has been focused on improving surgical techniques for the avoidance of permanent stomas in patients with colorectal cancer, ulcerative colitis, and fecal incontinence. He introduced a popular modification to the technique for creating an ileo-anal pouch , or j-pouch for ulcerative colitis, in which double stapling is used in place of sutures to improve results. He also popularized the colonic j-pouch for patients with rectal cancer. The J-pouch, an alternative to a permanent ileostomy or colostomy, allows patients who have had their colons removed to continue to have regular bowel movements without an ostomy bag. This is now the standard of care for patients with rectal carcinoma across the country and world.
Incontinence and Constipation Scores.
The Wexner Incontinence Score is the most common score used to determine the severity of incontinence before and after surgery for anal incontinence. The Wexner Incontinence Score is based on the research of Wexner and his associate J. Marcio N. Jorge, MD. The scoring system takes into account the frequency of incontinence, alterations a patient makes to cope with incontinence, and lifestyle modifications.
Dr. Wexner's research has also developed the Wexner Constipation Score, occasionally known as the Cleveland Clinic Constipation Score.[7] The score measures the severity of constipation by taking into consideration a number of factors, which his research found to correlate with objective physiologic findings. Information on these factors is collected from each patient's subjective reports, and they are given a score. This score allows for appropriate and consistent diagnosis and treatment. The factors include the frequency and completeness of bowel movements, the difficulty of evacuation, the type of assistance used (if any), the patient's level of pain, and duration of constipation.
In 1996, Dr. Wexner and colleagues released a method of scoring perianal disease activity for patients with Crohn's Disease. The goal of the scoring system is to utilize a patient's medical history and the results of physical examination to predict the likelihood of success of surgical intervention. Prior to the development of this method, doctors lacked reliable indices of disease activity or prognostic implications from surgery.
Honors and Awards.
In 1999, Dr. Wexner was awarded an FRCS from the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh, Scotland. In 2000 he was awarded an FRCS ad eundum from the Royal College of Surgeons in England. In 2008 he was elected to the Royal College of Surgeons of England by a unanimous vote of its council. This is the highest distinction conferred by the council. In 2015, Dr. Wexner was awarded honorary membership in the European Surgical Association and the European Society of Coloproctology.
In 2013, Dr. Wexner was awarded an honorary foreign membership in the Argentina Society of Coloproctology. In 2012, Dr. Wexner was awarded the degree of PhD honoris causa by the University of Belgrade. In 2003, The American Jewish Committee presented Dr. Wexner with the prestigious Maimonides Award. In 2013, he was awarded Professor Emeritus of I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University. In 2016, Dr. Wexner was recognized by Cleveland Clinic Florida as a Master Clinician.
In 2017, Dr. Wexner was awarded an honorary membership into the Society of General Surgery of Peru, honorary fellowship in the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, and Honorary Clinical Senior Lecturer at the University College London. On June 5, 2019, Dr. Wexner was award an Honorary Fellowship by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, Scotland.
Professional Memberships and Positions.
As of October 2020, Dr. Wexner is Vice-Chair of the Board of Regents of the American College of Surgeons. Through this position he also serves as Vice-Chair of the Executive Committee of the Board of Regents, the Vice-Chair of the Finance Committee of the ACS, and the Regental Liaison to the ACS Board of Governors.
From 2011 to 2012, Dr. Wexner served as president of the American Society of Colon and Rectal Surgeons, for which he gave a Presidential Address in 2012. Prior to that, from 2010 to 2011 he served as president of the American Board of Colon and Rectal Surgery. He also served as president of the Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons (SAGES) from 2006 to 2007. In 2007 he delivered the SAGES Presidential Address entitled "Trials and tribulations in the history of surgical innovation." 
Additionally, Dr. Wexner is currently on the Board of Regents of the American College of Surgeons. Within this organization he is on the executive committee for the Commission on Cancer, and he is the chair of the National Accreditation Program for Rectal Cancer.
Dr. Wexner has served as the president of other professional organizations, including the American Society of Colon and Rectal Surgeons Research Foundation, the Florida Gastroenterologic Society, and South Florida Chapter of the American College of Surgeons.
Publications.
Dr. Wexner is the co-editor-in-chief of Surgery. He has served on the editorial team for over 25 textbooks and has published 250 textbook chapters. He is also a reviewer for 31 journals and is on 33 editorial boards. Dr. Wexner has also authored numerous articles over his career. In his capacity as Regent for the American College of Surgeons, Dr. Wexner has also conducted a series of interviews with other surgeons from around the world called "A Surgeon's Voice". The interviews focus on these surgeons' experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic and their unique perspectives as medical professionals. He has produced over 100 videos which have received over 300,000 views, as of May 2020. This series includes an interview with Johnson & Johnson CEO, Alex Gorsky, on the process of developing their COVID-19 vaccine.
Dr. Wexner also published studies which resulted in the eponymous Wexner Incontinence Score and the Wexner Constipation Score, as well as the Pilarsky Wexner Perianal Crohn's Score:
Selected Articles.
As noted above, Dr. Wexner has published a myriad of articles in scientific journals and books, including 213 manuscripts and 26 editorials or commentaries in the last twenty years. . Most recently, he co-authored the following noteworthy articles on COVID, on the contributions of women to the field of colorectal surgery, and on racial disparities in colorectal surgery outcomes:
Personal life.
Dr. Wexner's father was Judge Ira Wexner, who presided in New York for over twenty years and lived part time in West Boca. Dr. Wexner's partner, Dr. Mariana Berho, is Chief of Staff at Cleveland Clinic Weston. 