Dr. Stuart Hutchison

Dr. Stuart Hutchison

Stuart Hutchison was born, raised and educated in Montréal. He studied physics, mathematics and philosophy before medical school, in French. He graduated medical school at McGill University, and then went on to complete his Internal Medicine and Cardiology training as well. He performed a two-year fellowship at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles studying coronary artery physiology, and a three-year research fellowship at the Cardiovascular Research Institute (CVRI) of the University of California in San Francisco studying the effects of tobacco smoke on arterial wall metabolism and atherogenesis. This and other research generated at and by the CVRI was part of the basis of second-hand smoke being deemed illegal in California, and then subsequently in the rest of North America.

He returned to Canada, to St. Michael’s Hospital at the University of Toronto where he worked for 13 years, as the Director of the Echocardiography and Vascular Ultrasound Laboratories, and was the site director for cardiology fellowship training. He implemented the first digital echocardiography laboratory and first digital vascular ultrasound laboratory in Canada, and achieved the first ISCAEL and ISCVL accreditation for echo labs and vascular ultrasound labs respectively, in Canada. He received divisional, departmental and provincial level teaching awards for cardiology. He completed cardiac MRI training in Berlin, and cardiac CT training in Munich.

He came to Calgary 15 years ago and was initially based at the University of Calgary where he is a Clinical Professor of Medicine. He directed the city-wide Echocardiography Service in Calgary for eight years. He received divisional, departmental, and provincial level teaching awards for cardiology – the only cardiologist in the country to receive provincial level teaching awards in two provinces.

He has written seven textbooks of cardiology: Pericardial Diseases, Aortic Diseases, Complications of Myocardial Infarction, Chest Radiography, Vascular Ultrasound and Intravascular Ultrasound, Echocardiography and Intracardiac Echocardiography, and Cardiac and Vascular Computed Tomography. They have been translated into Japanese, Chinese, Spanish and Polish.

He has published 90 abstracts, 90 manuscripts, and dozens of chapters beyond the above books. He has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine three times, and also in the Journal of the American Medical Association three times. His most lasting topic of research is aortic dissection where he has been involved with IRAD – the International Registry of Aortic Dissection now for 22 years. He was recently published in the Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery.

He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons Canada, of the American College of Cardiology, of the American Heart Association, of the American Society of Echocardiography, of the Society of Cardiac Commuted Tomography, and the Society of Cardiac MRI.

He adores patient care first-and-foremost, and mentoring younger physicians only slightly less.

As his younger son teases him – “back in the day” he ran 20 marathons, climbed 15 times in Alaska and 6 times in the Himalaya. He summitted Denali by three different routes. He climbed to the North Col of Mount Everest, before initiating an overnight rescue that was fortunately successful. He summited the South Summit of Mount Everest and was involved in attempted rescues. He was on the first winter-attempt of K2, which was finally achieved successfully by Nepali Sherpas earlier this year, 30 years later. His last Himalayan climb was to the 8,188 meter summit of Cho Oyo, the sixth highest mountain in the world, without supplemental oxygen, in still and blue skies.

In his down-time, he pursues knowledge of 20th-century military history, as so many people in his family served in the military. His great-grandfather was the Chief Medical Officer of the Canadian Army in WW1, his grandfather and great uncles served in the trenches of WW1, and his uncles served in the Royal Air Force, the Royal Navy as well as the U.S. Navy in WW2. He recently received an incredible collection of photographic albums of WW1 about his grandfather and great grandfather, which he treasures. He currently studies the Pacific War in WW2, well over a hundred books into the topic.

He cannot believe that he lives on peaceful and beautiful acres of land to the west of the City of Calgary with direct views of the Rockies, and is yet only 15 minutes away from the tertiary care hospitals that he is grateful to work at. He hopes to soon start learn fly-fishing among the natural beauty of Southern Alberta.