Over these many years, we have worked with several dedicated and talented Pediatric Cardiologists and Pediatric Cardiac Surgeons who each have so graciously volunteered their time and highly trained skills to the Rotary GOL-AZ project.  One of these Pediatric Cardiac Surgeons is Michael Teodori, M. D. Clinical Professor and the Director of Pediatric and Adult Congenital Cardiac Surgery at the University of Arizona Health Sciences Center, Department of Surgery in Tucson, AZ who has performed over 40 complex corrective open-heart surgeries for GOL-AZ since 1989 both in Arizona and Mexico.  Additionally, Dr. Teodori has recently traveled to Ethiopia to perform 18 surgeries for The Children’s Heart Fund of Ethiopia and Healing the Children project.

Dr. Teodori was just recently voted as one of the “Best top docs in America” by his peers and now will be honored at the upcoming Hon Kachina Volunteer Awards gala dinner on Saturday, October 1st with the prestigious Hon Kachina Award in recognition of his volunteerism in Arizona.  This 35th annual event will be held at the Camelback Inn – Marriott Resort in Scottsdale, AZ.

Before moving to Tucson in 2009, Dr. Teodori was Director of the Cardiothoracic Surgery Division at Phoenix Children’s Hospital working with children from newborn infants to teens with congenital heart defects requiring surgery where he helped develop the state-of-the-art Children’s Heart Center.  With all this, he still found time to perform over 300 open-heart surgeries per year which is around 70% of Arizona’s pediatric heart surgeries and with a mortality rate under 3% - one of the best in the nation. Additionally, at Phoenix Children’s he was noted as a distinguished cardiovascular surgeon on the Summit for the Ross Procedure where only a few hundred cardiothoracic surgeons in the world have mastered this procedure and are so licensed.