David S. Zamierowski, MD

2012 Honorary Health Professions Alumnus

After graduating from Johns Hopkins Medical School in 1968, completing an internship in surgery at the University of Pittsburgh, serving in Vietnam (where he received the Bronze Star for Achievement twice), finishing his general surgery residency in Nashville and his plastic surgery residency here at KU, staying here for private practice and founding The Wound Care Centers of Kansas City in the mid-1980s, inventing surface dressings and surgical wound devices for which he now holds more than 50 patents, and finally retiring … David S. Zamierowski, M.D., says he’s just getting started. 

With the introduction of The VAC external wound dressing by KCI (a company with which he has now had a twenty-year relationship) in 1995 and then the launch of the Prevena surgical incision dressing in 2009, Dr. Zamierowski joined the ranks of an elite group of physician-inventors who have had more than one commercially successful product.  The VAC has now been used to treat more than six million wounds. He is proudest of its use as a surgical adjunct and to stabilize traumatic wounds in the military. In clinical trials, the Prevena incisional-dressing shows a significant reduction in the surgical complications of seroma, hematoma, infection and dehiscence.  

Since retirement, Dr. Zamierowski has returned to KU where he has worked on and supported the programs for simulation and inter-professional education, and the scholars exchange program between KU and Christian Medical College in Vellore, India, honoring his own mentors, David Robinson, M.D. and Mani Mani, M.D.  And he is now mentoring bioengineering students in their Capstone project through the School of Physical Therapy and working in the Diabetes Research Lab, where his first co-authored paper is now published online.  He has worked with the KU School of Nursing, enabling research projects in cognitive behavior assessment by bringing the Strategic Management System for Simulation to KU.  And he has promoted the foreign studies program’s addition of St. Mary’s Hospital Lacor, School of Nursing, in northern Uganda.

For his dedication to advancing health professions education and supporting students’ creative and scholarly endeavors, the KU Health Professions Alumni Association is proud to name David S. Zamierowski, M.D., as its 2012 Honorary Health Professions Alumnus.