Paul Addonizio, 62, prolific heart surgeon

V. Paul Addonizio was the sort of heart surgeon whose work can be transformed into compelling drama on TV shows like Grey's Anatomy.

For instance, in 2000 Dr. Addonizio removed a 17-year-old's heart from her body, cut a tumor from it, and returned it to the body - an operation he considered rare at the time.

He was also prolific.

In 2005, The Inquirer reported that Dr. Addonizio "is known for his fast pace - an average of 300 operations a year - and willingness to take on high-risk patients, many 80 to 90 years old."

On Wednesday, May 5, Dr. Addonizio, 62, died of acute myeloid leukemia at his home in Newtown Square.

Dr. Addonizio had been surgical director of the Porter Institute for Valvular Heart Disease at Abington Memorial Hospital since its opening in 2006.

Since 1996, Dr. Addonizio had been chief of the division of cardiac surgery at Abington Memorial.

From 1989 to 1998, he was chief of the division of cardiac and thoracic surgery at Temple University Hospital.

Abington Memorial spokeswoman Linda Millevoi said that the 1996-98 overlap might have been because at its beginning, "our program was a cooperative endeavor between Abington and Temple."

Though he averaged 300 surgeries a year, Dr. Addonizio's work was sometimes far from routine.

In November 2000, Erika M. Berlinghof of Dresher was the 17-year-old president of the class of 2001 at Upper Dublin High School.

She also was a patient at Abington Memorial, where Dr. Addonizio had just removed the second tumor in three years from her heart.

In 1997, on her 14th birthday, Dr. Addonizio had operated on her heart but, The Inquirer reported, he "was unable to get all of the cancer cells because the tumor was so large."

Berlinghof underwent chemotherapy, but earlier in November 2000, the results of a cardiogram forced her to return to Dr. Addonizio.

"This time," The Inquirer reported, Dr. Addonizio and his team "faced a bigger dilemma" than in 1997.

"The walnut-sized tumor was in the back of the heart and inaccessible. They chose to perform a rare auto-transplant . . .

"A heart-lung machine kept her alive [while] surgeons worked on her heart," and so Dr. Addonizio "stopped Berlinghof's heart, removed it from the chest cavity, and placed it in a basin filled with icy saline solution.

"There he removed her tumor and patched her damaged heart with tissue from a cow's heart. The procedure took 51/2 hours."

The hospital reported at the time that such a procedure had been attempted only a few times elsewhere - in 1983 (the patient died), in 1998 (the patient survived for only two months), and later twice, successfully.

In the summer of 2005, Mary Kate Phelan of Newtown Borough was a 17-year-old at Council Rock North High School who as a junior - and "despite abbreviated workouts, shortness of breath and nausea . . . still was tops this year in the 100-and 200-meter dashes in the Suburban One League, qualified for the PIAA state meet in the 200 dash and 4x100 relay, and qualified for the AAU nationals in the 4x100 relay," The Inquirer wrote.

She already held three of the school's individual records and three of its relay records.

But a birth defect meant she needed an aortic-valve transplant.

In that summer before her senior year and hoping for an athletic career in college, she chose to have Dr. Addonizio perform the surgery.

"She just didn't want to be better," he told The Inquirer. "She wanted to be normal, and normal for her is being a competitive runner."

Normal for him, he suggested, was "knowing we could give her a chance to follow her dream."

Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., Dr. Addonizio graduated from Xavier High School in Manhattan, earned his bachelor's degree in biology at New York University, and graduated from Cornell University Medical College in 1974.

At the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, he was an assistant professor of surgery from 1984 to 1987 and an associate professor from 1987 to 1989.

At Temple University School of Medicine, he was professor of surgery from 1989 to 2005.

Dr. Addonizio is survived by his wife, Susan Williams; his mother, Frances; son Paul; daughter Elizabeth; and a sister.

A memorial will be held at 3 p.m. Saturday, May 15, at Newtown Square Presbyterian Church, 3600 Goshen Rd., Newtown Square, followed by a private burial.

Contributions can be sent to the Porter Institute for Valvular Heart Disease, Abington Memorial Hospital, 1200 Old York Rd., Abington 19001.