Joe Giordano, surgeon who helped save President Reagan’s life after assassination attempt, has died

WASHINGTON (AP) — Dr. Joseph Giordano, a surgeon who played a central role in saving President Ronald Reagan’s life after an assassination attempt in 1981, has died. He was 84.

He died on June 24 at a hospital in Washington, D.C. from an infection related to a lengthy illness, his family said.

Giordano was in charge of The George Washington University Hospital’s trauma teams that treated Reagan after the president had been shot and badly wounded on March 30, 1981. Over the course of several dramatic hours, doctors stabilized Reagan, retrieved a bullet an inch from his heart and stanched massive internal bleeding.

“Dr. Giordano and the doctors at GW, without them, Ronald Reagan would have died,” said Jerry Parr, the president’s lead Secret Service agent at the time, in a 2010 interview for the book ” Rawhide Down.”

Revamps GW
emergency room

Giordano, the grandson of Italian immigrants, was born and raised in New Jersey. He graduated from Georgetown University in 1961 and six years later obtained a medical degree from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia.

After a stint in the U.S. Army, he joined GW as a vascular surgeon. A few weeks before he started in 1976, GW’s chief of surgery told Giordano that he would have another job — fixing and managing the emergency room.

“The handling of trauma patients down there is a real mess,” his boss said.

Giordano quickly discovered that assessment was correct. Inexperienced doctors were leading inefficient medical teams. Care was haphazard. Giordano watched as at least one patient died because treatment was rendered too slowly.

Seeking out experts, he spent a month working at what would become the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center at the University of Maryland. The teams at Shock Trauma operated with speed and precision. They were methodical. He brought the approach to GW. Soon, the hospital’s trauma center was regarded as among the best in the country.

“We had everything going like clockwork,” said Dr. David Gens, who helped treat Reagan and went on to a long career in trauma surgery. “Joe had us properly trained. We had the right protocols. Everyone had a job. Organization and time are essential. So that when something happened, when the president came in, we were well organized. Thanks in part to Joe’s foresight, we saved the president’s life.”

‘STAT to the ER’

It was a typical March Monday for Giordano when a would-be assassin, John Hinckley, Jr., opened fire on Reagan as the president left a speech at the Washington Hilton Hotel. Parr, the Secret Service agent, shoved Reagan into a limousine, and it hurtled from the scene. On the ride back to the White House, Parr realized Reagan had been hurt, perhaps from being flung into the armored Lincoln. Not knowing the extent of the injuries — doctors would soon discover he had been shot — Parr directed the limousine to the hospital.

At GW Giordano was treating a patient when the intercom began blaring: “Dr. Giordano, STAT to the ER. Dr. Giordano, STAT to the ER.” Though he had turned over responsibility for running the emergency room to another doctor, Giordano was still in charge of the trauma teams. He knew something must be terribly wrong for him to be summoned that way.

In the ER, he found a man he recognized as the president on gurney. Nurses had already cut off Reagan’s clothes and inserted IV lines. Strangely, the first thing that Giordano noticed about the president was his dark hair. It seemed so natural. “I wondered,” Giordano recalled in a 2010 interview, “if he dyed it.”

“How are you doing, Mr. President?” he asked.

“I’m having trouble breathing,” Reagan replied.

Bleeding won’t stop

Gens, a chief surgical resident, provided Giordano a quick summary of the situation: The president had been shot in the left side, his chest was filling with blood and they were about to insert a chest tube to drain the chest cavity.

Giordano did not hesitate. “You better let me do this one.” He typically would have let a resident handle such a procedure, but he felt it would be irresponsible to put such pressure on young doctors. He made an incision eight inches below Reagan’s left armpit and inserted the tube.

It relieved pressure on Reagan’s lung and allowed him to breathe more easily. But the bleeding did not stop. Doctors decided they had to operate.

Giordano and Gens performed a peritoneal lavage — known as a “belly tap” — and ensured that Reagan’s abdomen was clear of blood. They then turned over the patient to a chest surgeon, Dr. Benjamin Aaron, who halted the bleeding and retrieved the bullet.

Reagan spent 11 days at GW and fully recovered from his wounds. Three others were injured in the shooting: White House Press Secretary Jim Brady; Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy; and Thomas Delahanty, a police officer.

Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity. He was confined at a psychiatric hospital until a federal judge in 2022 ordered his unconditional release.

‘Today, Mr. President, we are all Republicans’

Giordano would go on to become GW’s chairman of surgery, a post he held for 18 years before retiring in 2010.

That same year, he joined the board at Partner for Surgery, a nonprofit group that arranges surgery for people living in rural Guatemala. Tapping his contacts in the medical community, Giordano recruited doctors and nurses to travel to the Central American country to provide the badly needed medical services, said Frank Peterson, the group’s founder. Giordano also led several medical teams on such missions.

“The one word I would use to describe him is humanitarian,” Peterson said. “He had the skills and capabilities that made a world of difference to people who were in need.”

Though Giordano played a decisive role in saving Reagan’s life, the physician may best be remembered for a line he delivered in the operating room.

Just before he was administered anesthesia, Reagan dramatically got up on an elbow, took off his oxygen mask and said, “I hope you are all Republicans.”

Giordano, a staunch liberal, didn’t miss a beat: “Today, Mr. President, we are all Republicans.”

Years later, the surgeon jokingly reflected that “it was okay to be a Republican for a day, especially that day.”