Yale Professor Emeritus Kristaps Keggi Has Died at Age 88

Pioneering orthopedic surgeon, Kristaps J. Keggi, M.D., Yale Medicine Professor Emeritus, died July 4, 2023, at the age of 88.

“Dr. Keggi was a gentleman, a philanthropist, and an educator who was immeasurably passionate about Yale,” said Lisa Lattanza, M.D., Chair for the Department of Orthopaedics & Rehabilitation.

“He was a world-class physician who pioneered the anterior approach to hip replacement surgery, served in the U.S. Army as the preeminent orthopaedic surgeon stationed in Vietnam, operated in dozens of countries throughout his career, and created new international educational opportunities for surgeons specializing in adult reconstruction. Words alone cannot hold a light to the impact he brought to the world, but I can assure you that we have all benefitted from calling him a colleague, a mentor, and a friend.”

Kristaps Juris Keggi was born in Riga, Latvia in 1934. His father was surgeon Jānis Kegi. His grandfather was folklorist, teacher and pastor Ludis Bērziņš.

During World War II, he fled to Germany with his family in 1944.

He came to the United States in 1949. He studied medicine at Yale University between 1951 and 1959, and then completed his surgical internship at the Roosevelt Hospital in New York.

Keggi also did a residency in orthopedic surgery at Yale New Haven Hospital in 1965.

After completing his training, he served as a military doctor in the Vietnam War from 1965 to 1966. He was stationed with the 173rd Airborne as Chief of Surgery at the 3rd Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in Biên Hòa, Vietnam.

In 1966, he came back to Yale to serve as an assistant professor. Keggi also had his own clinical practice between 1966 and 2016. He had orthopedic surgical privileges at both St. Mary’s Hospital and Waterbury Hospital.

He also served for a time as the director of Waterbury Hospital’s Orthopaedic Center for Joint Reconstruction and as a senior research scientist at the Yale School of Medicine.

In 1989, Keggi became a clinical professor of orthopaedics & rehabilitation at Yale and was elected full professor in the department at Yale in 2008. He was named Elihu Professor of Orthopaedics & Rehabilitation in 2010 and retired from clinical practice to become a professor emeritus on December 31, 2016.

Keggi never forgot where he came from and would go to Lativa and other Baltic Nations to perform demonstration operations and to give lectures and seminars.

In 1988, he founded the non-profit Keggi Orthopaedic Foundation to allow for formal academic exchanges between the United States and the USSR. And in 1990, he founded the memorial museum of his grandfather Ludis Bērziņš in Jūrmala, Latvia, established the “Keggi Velo,” a bike race in memory of his father, and was the founder of the Ludis Bērziņš Prize.

Keggi is considered by many to be the pioneer of the anterior approach to total hip replacement. He received multiple national and international awards and four honorary doctorates. Some of these include the Latvian Order of the Three Stars in 1993, the V Class Order of the Estonian Red Cross in 1999, the Distinguished Service Medal of the Latvian Physicians Association in 2009, and the Silver Medal of Medical Dignity and Service to Russian Medicine in 2012.

He received the George H. W. Bush Lifetime of Leadership Award from Yale University in 2005. He also received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Connecticut Orthopaedic Society.

In 2016, Keggi was a co-author on The Direct Anterior Approach to Hip Reconstruction, and in 2022, he self-published his autobiography, My Century: A Memoir of War, Peace, and Pioneering in the Operating Room.