Fernando Gomez-Rivas, M.D.

Fernando Gómez-Rivas, M.D., a cardio-thoracic surgeon born in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1931, died Friday, August 12, in his home in Aventura, Florida, at the age of 85. Dr. Gómez obtained his medical degree at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in 1956. In the early 1960s, he made Colombian medical history with a series of groundbreaking operations, including the first reattachments of a leg (1962) and hand (1963), and, in 1965, the nation's first kidney transplant (with nephrologist Enrique Carvajal Arjona). Shortly after these pioneering successes, Dr. Gómez and his wife, Consuelo Gómez-Nuñez, M.D., moved to the United States, where he trained at Cook County Hospital in Chicago, Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, as well as Temple University and Hahnemann University in Philadelphia. Dr. Gómez achieved board certification in general surgery, vascular surgery, and cardio-thoracic surgery and ultimately settled his family in Narberth, Pennsylvania, teaching and practicing surgery at local university hospitals (Temple, Hahnemann, Robert Wood Johnson, and Cooper), with a long and notable tenure at Deborah Heart and Lung Center. When he retired, he moved to Aventura, Florida, and ...[more]

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rida, and authored two books: Raices Boyacenses: Genealogias (with Rafael Roa Medina, 2003) and Federico Rivas Frade (1999), an anthology of his maternal grandfather's poetry. He is predeceased by wife Consuelo Gómez-Nuñez, M.D, his father Alberto Gómez-Mora, and his mother Aura Helena Rivas Aldana, He is survived by his companion of twenty-two years Luz Angel; daughter Gerda Gómez-Pasquarello and her husband Donald A. Pasquarello, M.D., of Beverly, Massachusetts; three sons, Fernando Gómez, Jr. of Chatham, New Jersey, John Paul Gómez, M.D., and his wife Susan Brown-Gómez of Perkasie, Pennsylvania, Michael A. Gómez and his wife Whitney Kane-Gómez of Newport Beach, California; three brothers, Alberto Gómez-Rivas of Houston, Texas, Federico Gómez-Rivas, and Jorge Enrique Gómez-Rivas both of Bogotá, Colombia.; as well as his beloved seven grandchildren. Dr. Gómez will never be forgotten by the scores of patients, friends, and family members whose lives he touched in America and Colombia. In lieu of gifts or flowers, the family donations can be made to St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital.