Kristaps Keggi
Kristaps Juris Keggi (born August 9, 1934) is a Latvian-American orthopedic surgeon. He is considered to be the pioneer of the anterior approach to total hip replacement. He is the recipient of multiple national and international awards and four Honorary Doctorates. Biography. Kristaps Keggi was born in Riga, Latvia in 1934 in the family of surgeon Jānis Kegi. His grandfather was folklorist, teacher and pastor (1870–1965). During World War II, he fled with his family to Germany in 1944, and moved to the United States in 1949. He studied medicine at Yale University (1951-1959) and was  a resident at the Roosevelt Hospital in New York and at Yale-New Haven Hospital. From 1965 to 1966 he participated in the Vietnam War as a military doctor. Keggi was stationed with the 173rd Airborne as Chief of Surgery at the 3rd Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in Biên Hòa, Vietnam. In 1966, he joined Yale University as an assistant professor. In 1989, he became a clinical professor of orthopaedics and rehabilitation at Yale University. In 2008, he was elected full professor in the Department of Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation at Yale, and in 2010 he was named Elihu Professor of  Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation. He has served as Senior Research Scientist at the Yale School of Medicine and as the director of Yale-New Haven Hospital’s Joint Replacement Center and of Waterbury Hospital’s Orthopaedic Center for Joint Reconstruction. He has practiced orthopaedic surgery at both St. Mary's Hospital (1969-1989) and Waterbury Hospital (1969-2018). Since 1987, he has regularly visited Latvia, where he has performed demonstration operations, conducted seminars, and given lectures. In 1988, he founded the non-profit Keggi Orthopaedic Foundation to allow for formal academic exchanges between the United States and the USSR. The organization  has provided fellowships in advanced orthopaedic surgery at the Yale School of Medicine and at Waterbury Hospital for more than 300 surgeons from the Baltic nations, Russia, and Vietnam. In 1990, he founded the memorial museum of his grandfather Luda Bērziņš in Jūrmala. He established the "Keggi Velo," a bike race in memory of my father. He is the founder of the Luda Bērziņš Prize. Keggi's daughters have been successful in sports. Mara Keggi participated in the 1988 Summer Olympics in rowing competitions, while Caroline Keggi has participated in LPGA Tour golf tournaments. Publications. Keggi studied major joint replacement , spinal diseases and wound treatment. He is the author and co-author of numerous publications including: He is the co-author of "The Direct Anterior Approach to Hip Reconstruction" (2016). Awards. Keggi received the Latvian Order of the Three Stars in 1993, the V Class Order of the Estonian Red Cross in 1999, the Distinguished Service Medal of the Latvian Physicians Association (the second ever awarded) in 2009 and the Silver Medal of Medical Dignity and Service to Russian Medicine in 2012. He received the George H.W. Bush Lifetime of Leadership Award from Yale University in 2005. In 1994, the  Pauls Stradiņš Museum of the History of Medicine and the LAS awarded him the Pauls Stradiņš Prize. He is an Honorary Member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences (1990) and the Russian Academy of Sciences (1993) and an Honorary Doctor of Riga Stradiņš University (1997) and the University of Latvia (2009).