Dr. Lawrence J. Brandt earned his bachelor’s degree with honors from The College of the City of New York and his medical degree from The State University of New York Downstate Medical Center. He then did his postgraduate medical education, including a fellowship in Gastroenterology, at The Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, after which he served in the Army as a gastroenterologist stationed in Stuttgart, Germany. After his military discharge, Dr. Brandt joined the staff of Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, New York, where he currently is the Emeritus Chief of Gastroenterology and Professor of Medicine and Surgery at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Among his contributions to gastroenterology are: the first endoscopic removal of a gastric polyp; the demonstration that in small bowel bacterial overgrowth states, gastrointestinal bacteria produce cobamides from dietary vitamin B12 that may inhibit vitamin B12 absorption; that most cases of newly diagnosed inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in the elderly are actually ischemic colitis misdiagnosed as ulcerative or Crohn’s colitis; the demonstration that metronidazole can heal perineal Crohn’s disease; the development of a cytology balloon for the diagnosis of esophagitis in AIDS patients; the classification of ischemic colitis and elucidation that isolated right-sided ischemic colitis has a worse prognosis than ischemic colitis in other locations; he was a pioneer in the use of colonoscopic fecal microbiota transplantation to treat recurring C. difficile colitis. Long-standing major interests are the patient-doctor relationship and how a patient’s psychological makeup influences his/her illnesses and treatments. The author or editor of 850 publications and 10 books, Dr. Brandt is one of the 3 senior editors of the standard textbook in gastroenterology (Sleisenger and Fordtran’s Gastroenterology and Liver Disease), and served for 10 years as Associate Editor for the Focal Points section of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy. Dr. Brandt has received many awards and honors, including the Distinguished Educator Award from both the American Gastroenterological Association and the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy; the Clinical Achievement award of the ACG; the William Dock M.D. Master Teacher Award in Medicine of SUNY (Downstate Medical Center) and the Downstate Medical Center Alumni Association Achievement Medallion for Distinguished Service to Medicine. Dr. Brandt is a Master of the ACG and served on the Board of Trustees of that organization for 13 years before being elected President of the ACG, 1992-1993. He served 3 terms as a member of the American Board of Internal Medicine subspecialty section in Gastroenterology. Dr. Brandt has been Visiting Professor at many institutions throughout the United States, and has given over 500 lectures nationally and internationally. He is an honorary member of the Puerto Rican, Argentine and Dominican Republic’s Societies of Gastroenterology. Dr. Brandt is a member of the Albert Einstein’s Leo M. Davidoff Society for excellence in teaching of medical students and was named the Montefiore Staff and Alumni Association’s Honoree in 1999. Since 1994, he has been listed every year in Best Doctors in America and since 1998 in Who’s Who. Dr. Brandt is also an Honorary Police Surgeon for the New York Police Department.
