Surgery in Space Takes Flight in Today’s Best of Grand Rounds

What happens when an astronaut needs surgery during spaceflight?

At 11:30 am today, Tovy H. Kamine, MD, MBA, FACS, will address that question in the final "Best of Grand Rounds" lecture of Clinical Congress 2026, "Surgery in Space" (GR03).

Dr. Kamine, a trauma, acute care, and critical care surgeon, is the director of emergency surgery services at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Massachusetts. Although not an astronaut, he has extensive experience in aerospace medicine. As an undergraduate, he worked with NASA at the Dryden Flight Research Center (now the Neil A. Armstrong Flight Research Center) in Edwards, California, and has since founded the Space Surgery Association. He also is an editor of the 2026 textbook Procedural Medicine for Spaceflight.

Although Dr. Kamine is now a longtime member of the aerospace medicine community, he said he is still “almost always the only surgeon in the room.”

That reflects a broader reality of spaceflight: “NASA's probably not going to send a surgeon into space anytime soon.”

His Best of Grand Rounds lecture offers surgeons a rare look at this unusual area of surgical science.

Dr. Kamine will describe how clinical science and spaceflight intersect. This will include the constraints that affect surgical interventions aboard a spacecraft, from operating in extremely confined spaces to communicating with Earth across vast distances.

“It’s really the most austere surgery you can probably get. It's the most rural you could possibly get, and then some,” he said, noting that surgery in Antarctica may be the closest comparison on Earth.

Dr. Kamine said the lecture may particularly interest rural surgeons and military surgeons. Minimally invasive surgeons may also be interested in research specific to their practice: “There's a lot of research on doing robotic surgery in space.”

More generally, the lecture may appeal to surgeons interested in surgery in austere or challenging environments.

 “Surgery in space is basically taking the hardest possible things and doing it, and so anybody who's interested in how we can do things in crazy environments should come and hang out and watch,” he said.

Although the subject presents serious challenges, Dr. Kamine emphasized that his lecture will be light-hearted and enjoyable.

“I really enjoy giving this talk,” he said. “The whole thing's really fun. You will come away from this thinking very differently about every resource we have on Earth, and how lucky we are.”

The Best of Grand Rounds series, featuring lectures nominated by surgeons across the country, will be available on demand until February 22, 2027.