VA Maryland Health Care System Surgeon Recognized with National Lifetime Achievement Award

The Association of VA Surgeons (AVAS) an independent, non-profit organization, not affiliated with the Veterans Health Administration, has recently recognized Dr. Brajesh Lal, chief of Vascular Surgery at the Baltimore VA Medical Center and professor of Vascular Surgery at the University of Maryland School of Medicine with the 2024 Distinguished Service Lifetime Achievement Award. 

“We are honored that a vascular surgeon and researcher of Dr. Lal’s caliber is serving veterans here at the VA Maryland Health Care System. His contributions to understanding major vascular illnesses affecting millions of patients and causing death and disability with an aim to prevent them has been cutting-edge,” said Jonathan R. Eckman, P.E, director of the VA Maryland Health Care System, an integrated health care system that includes the Baltimore VA Medical Center.

Lal’s career-long mission to understand the human body and remain connected to the care and treatment of it as a whole has inspired his focus of the vascular system. “I go where the blood vessels take me,” he said, and frequently telling his students, noting that “blood vessels touch every organ in the body.”

After receiving his medical training at All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi, India in 1988, he obtained his master’s in science in 1992 at the same institution. He served as a 

Fogarty Research Fellow at National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD and subsequently completed his general surgery and vascular fellowship at Rutgers-New Jersey Medical School in Newark, NJ. Aside from his positions at the VA Maryland Health Care System and the University of Maryland School of Medical, he is a professor in the Department of Bioengineering at George Mason University and a professor in the Department of Neurology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. He serves as a fellow of the American College of Surgeons and a distinguished fellow of the Society for Vascular Surgery and the American Venous Forum. 

To advance his innovative and cutting-edge research, he has received more than $40 million in grant funding from federal and industry sources and has been instrumental in mentees receiving more than $5 million in funding. With more than 200 peer reviewed citations and 25 book chapters to his credit, his impact on the practice of vascular surgery has included two groundbreaking works published in the New England of Journal of Medicine: “Carotid Stenting versus Endarterectomy for Treatment of Carotid-Artery Stenosis (CREST trial)” and as a principal investigator in the VA sponsored “Open Versus Endovascular Repair of Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (OVER)” trial.

As director of the Center for Vascular Research, Lal’s research goals include basic discoveries in vascular disease and translating those discoveries into preventive, diagnostic and treatment protocols. Other goals include testing new protocols and devices for safety and efficacy and training the next generation of emerging physicians and scientists.

“It is a great honor to award the 2024 AVAS Distinguished Service Award to Dr. Brajesh Lal,” said Dr. Michael F. Amendola, a vascular surgeon at the Central Virginia VA Health Care System where he serves as the division chief of Vascular Surgery and head of the Vascular Duplex Laboratory, a professor of surgery at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, and chair of the AVAS Awards Committee.

The AVAS Distinguished Service Award is given to the physician, provider and/or administrator who has served within the structure of the Veterans Health Administration and who has demonstrated outstanding contributions in rendering patient care, providing support to the health care organization and in a leadership role.

For Lal, the award which “came as a surprise out of nowhere,” is an affirmation of his life’s work. “I consider the immensely valuable award an affirmation of my belief that relying on research and science is the most important thing we can do as physicians.”

Past awardees of the Distinguished Service Lifetime Achievement Award include stalwart medical giants such as Dr. Michael DeBakey and Dr. Julie Freischlag.

Established in 1967, the AVAS exists as a platform for surgeons to present research and to promote quality patient care, enhance education, and optimize career fulfillment in the field of surgery and its subspecialists, dedicated to improving health care for veterans, medical education and research conducted by surgeons within VA.