For Alex Fairman, MD, the path to vascular surgery began long before medical school.
As a high school senior, he had the opportunity to shadow surgeons at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Watching them work, he was struck by their technical skill and composure and captivated by the operating room itself.
It was the beginning of a journey that would keep bringing him back to Penn.
Twenty-five years later, Dr. Fairman has been an undergraduate and medical student at the University of Pennsylvania, completed his vascular surgery training there and joined its faculty. Today, he serves as Assistant Professor of Surgery in the Division of Vascular Surgery and Endovascular Therapies at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and Director of Pediatric Vascular Surgery at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP).
Along the way, he found not only his specialty, but an opportunity to help build an area of vascular surgery where the need, and the potential for impact, is significant.
Finding His Place in Vascular Surgery
During medical school, Dr. Fairman explored numerous surgical specialties. Vascular surgery ultimately stood apart.
He was drawn to its breadth: the ability to operate throughout the body, perform both open and minimally invasive procedures and care for some of medicine’s most complex patients. He also valued having a range of treatment options that allowed him to recommend the intervention best suited to an individual patient.
Perhaps most meaningful was the opportunity to build relationships with patients over time.
“I could not be happier with my decision to pursue vascular surgery,” he says.
That decision eventually led him toward an even more specialized calling: caring for children with vascular disease.
The Opportunity to Influence a Lifetime
Pediatric vascular surgery remains an unfamiliar field to many, even within medicine. But the range of conditions these specialists encounter is substantial, from congenital aortopathies and arteriopathies to thoracic outlet syndrome, compression syndromes, oncovascular reconstructions, and traumatic vascular injuries.
For Dr. Fairman, treating children also changes the meaning of an intervention. There is an opportunity not simply to improve a patient’s health today, but to influence the course of an entire lifetime.
That possibility continues to motivate him, along with the technical and intellectual challenges of operating on children and the opportunity to innovate for a patient population that has historically had limited access to dedicated vascular expertise.
One of his particular passions is treating congenital aortopathies and renovascular hypertension. These rare and highly complex conditions are treated by relatively few providers worldwide.
At CHOP, Dr. Fairman has worked to create a comprehensive program capable of offering the full spectrum of vascular interventions these patients may require—from endovascular procedures to complex open operations, including bypasses and autotransplantation.
Building the program required believing in an idea before its success was assured.
There were those who questioned whether a dedicated pediatric vascular surgery program could succeed. Five years later, the program has experienced tremendous growth and now averages approximately 60 cases each year.
For Dr. Fairman, that growth represents something larger than a number. It demonstrates that the need was there, and that children with complex vascular conditions can benefit from having a specialist dedicated to their care.
Mentorship that Shapes a Career
Dr. Fairman’s journey has also been shaped by people who invested in him along the way.
The Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS) has been an important part of that experience. Through the SVS community, he received consistent mentorship from vascular surgeons including Drs. Dawn Coleman, James Stanley and Erica Mitchell.
Those relationships demonstrate why professional societies can play such an important role beyond education and clinical advancement. They can create connections, open doors and help physicians envision possibilities for their careers that they may not have seen on their own.
The SVS’s recent creation of a pediatric steering committee is particularly meaningful to Dr. Fairman. By increasing awareness and education around pediatric vascular care, the committee can help strengthen an area of the specialty that still has considerable room to grow.
Why Voices Matter
That same belief in visibility and opportunity is central to the mission of the SVS Foundation’s Voices of Vascular.
For Dr. Fairman, programs that elevate different experiences and perspectives help create a stronger vascular surgery community, one that better reflects and understands the patients it serves.
Visibility can also have a powerful ripple effect. When students and trainees see people with different journeys building meaningful careers, leading programs and shaping the future of the specialty, they can more readily imagine a place for themselves within vascular surgery.
Support for initiatives like Voices of Vascular helps make that possible by expanding opportunities for education, mentorship, engagement and leadership.
And strengthening the people within vascular surgery ultimately strengthens the care the specialty can provide.
Looking Toward the Next Generation
Dr. Fairman sees tremendous opportunity ahead for vascular surgery.
Advances in endovascular therapies, imaging and data-driven decision-making will continue to expand what surgeons can offer patients, making it possible to treat increasingly complex disease with greater precision and less morbidity.
But he believes progress must be measured by more than technology.
It also means ensuring that more patients can access high-quality vascular care and investing in the people who will lead the specialty forward.
Mentorship, leadership development and representation will be critical to building that future. A workforce shaped by different experiences and perspectives can ask new questions, challenge assumptions, drive innovation and deepen the specialty’s understanding of the communities it serves.
It is why Dr. Fairman offers a simple but powerful message to students beginning their own journeys: “Believe that you belong in the room, even when the path ahead feels challenging or unfamiliar.”
He encourages future physicians to seek mentors who will support and challenge them, remain curious, ask questions and pursue opportunities outside their comfort zones. Most importantly, he reminds them that the experiences they bring with them are strengths, and that their own journeys can make the path more visible for those who come next.
For Dr. Fairman, that future includes continuing to grow the comprehensive pediatric vascular surgery program at CHOP and expanding what is possible for children with complex vascular disease.
When you donate to the SVS Foundation, you support Voices of Vascular and its mission to promote diversity, equity and inclusion. Learn more and make your gift today.
Alex Fairman, MD, is Director of Pediatric Vascular Surgery, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Assistant Professor of Surgery, Division of Vascular Surgery and Endovascular Therapies, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania
