[Ortho] Tribute to Jeffrey Welling Mast, MD 

[Djoldas Kuldjanov]

5/04/2019 от нас ушёл мой друг и ментор Jeff Mast. Jeff died this 
morning - peacefully. End of an Era!





From: AO North America

Sent: Friday, April 5, 2019 4:17 PM

To: Djoldas Kuldjanov

Subject: Tribute to Jeffrey Welling Mast, MD   

    


Jeff Mast MD, renowned AO surgeon, teacher, and mentor passed away 
peacefully today. Below is a tribute written by some of his close 
friends. We send our deepest condolences to his family.





AO North America


Tribute to Jeffrey Welling Mast, MD

1940-2019




As we reflect on important people we encounter in our lives, one 
singular individual stands usually stands out above all others, as 
having the most dramatic effect on the course and direction we have 
chosen in our professionalcareers. To many of us who have spent our 
careers in the AO Foundation, that individual was Jeffrey Welling Mast, 
MD. It is a great honor to write this tribute for our long-term mentor, 
critic, teacher, and most important of all, our very close friend.





Jeffrey Welling Mast was born September 7, 1940, in Easton, New York. 
Jeff was the son of a renowned artist/educator, Gerald Mast. Jeff’s 
legendary pre-operative planning and operative skills reflected this 
artistic background.  An outstanding athlete, he was an expert skier and 
was a walk-on to the University of Colorado football team. His career 
included an early Peace Corps participation in Vietnam and Tibet into 
which he enlisted following a Medicine internship.  A random medical 
encounter with the wife of a hotel owner in Katmandu was responsible for 
Jeff finding his place in surgery. As head of the Peace Corps in the 
Southeast Asia area, and later director of healthcare efforts in Tibet, 
Jeff was asked to accompany the wife of a local Katmandu Russian hotel 
owner on an air evacuation medical mission to seek specialized care in 
Bern, Switzerland.  Jeff was introduced to Maurice Muller, he became 
fascinated with Muller’s surgical skills, ultimately influencing him to 
enter into orthopedic surgery and specialize in fracture fixation, 
nonunion, bio-regenerative hip salvage and osteotomy of the hip and knee 
deformities.





After completing orthopaedic training at University of Southern 
California Los Angeles County Hospital, he had various practice 
locations and training, eventually spending two years in Bern, 
Switzerland. The time he spent in Bern resulted in a career-long 
friendship with Reinhold Ganz.  This friendship resulted in development 
of a safe method of performing periacetabular osteotomy and 
bioregenerative surgical treatment of hip disease, which created 
tremendous opportunities to improve patients with congenital hip 
dysplasia and Perthes disease. As a result of the friendship and 
collaboration with Ganz, these two surgeons became the top two 
contemporary hip preservation and reconstructive surgeons in the world. 
Jeff’s career was focused on developing and learning new techniques and 
perfecting them. Jeff also had a close friendship with another 
contemporary orthopaedic icon, the esteemed acetabular surgeon Emile 
Letournel. He would travel extensively with Emile and his“Bande of 
Letournel”  worldwide, teaching their craft.




In 1989, together with Drs. Ganz and Jakob, Jeff wrote the book“Planning 
and Reduction Techniques in Fracture Surgery”. This book singularly 
changed orthopaedic trauma surgery. The book’s deviation from rigid AO 
doctrine was initially sharply criticized by previous AO generations as 
heresy. However, using incredibly detailed imaging, it promoted the 
concepts of preoperative planning, using the plate implant as a 
reduction instrument, the concept of minimally invasive surgery, 
restoration of extremity length and axis, using implants to perform the 
reduction, and the concept of indirect reduction and bridging of 
comminuted fracture zones were developed.  Today, the study of this book 
is essential to the training of the modern orthopedic trauma surgeon.





Jeff’s uncanny ability to draw the skeleton, the perfect osteotomy angle 
of correction, the appropriate implant size and dimension, (usually a 
blade plate), and then be able to overlay his preoperative plan on the 
postoperative radiograph to be exactly perfect to his final surgical 
result, without using templates, was mesmerizing.





The consummate educator, Jeff was frequently observed to be the last 
person to leave the classroom or teaching laboratory, where he had spent 
time addressing a range of questions, from the easiest to the most 
complex operative technique. He was more often than not the teacher’s 
teacher. In his later years, he would not hesitate to travel any 
distance to help his disciples with difficult surgical cases and 
preoperative planning. These types of visits were unique to Jeff, and an 
invaluable surgical and social experience for all of us lucky enough to 
have“The Master”  present in our operating rooms. We, who knew him 
personally, as well as the thousands of students he taught throughout 
his professional life, are indebted to this man for his erudite, 
visionary teaching, his pursuit in the achievement of the perfect 
operative result, and his unending courage to take on increasingly more 
difficult cases. His impact on the advancement of orthopaedic trauma and 
reconstructive surgery cannot be measured.





With Jeff’s passing, The AO Foundation and AO North America’s“Camelot 
Era”  has lost its“Knight in Shining Armor”. This is an end of an era 
when absolute excellence was the only acceptable result to the Master. 
Every implant, screw, plate or nail had to be in the correct position, 
the correct axis with the correct amount of compression, to obtain his 
approval. Every implant and screw had a purpose to create the perfect 
reduction and compression, without additional hardware according to 
the“MINI-MAX”  principles. It is our wish that his memory be never 
forgotten, that his preoperative planning skills still be taught at 
every AO Course, and the recognition of his accomplishments and 
techniques be preserved for future generations.  We all stand on Jeffrey 
Mast’s shoulders when we treat each and every orthopaedic trauma and 
reconstructive surgery patient.





Eric E. Johnson, M.D.


Keith A. Mayo, M.D


Joel M. Matta, MD


Brett Bolhofner, MD

Djoldas Kuldjanov