With great sorrow and respect, we acknowledge the passing of an esteemed mentor and colleague, Professor Richard Van Praagh.
Dr Van Praagh, Professor of Pathology, Emeritus at Harvard Medical School passed away peacefully on September 13, 2025, at the age of 95. An iconic figure within the congenital heart disease community, Professor Van Praagh will be most widely remembered by cardiac surgeons as the creator, and chief proponent (along with his wife, cardiologist Stella Van Praagh) of the “Segmental Approach” to the diagnosis and classification of congenital heart disease.
Dr Richard Van Praagh was an internationally renowned pediatric cardiologist with a special interest in cardiac pathology and cardiac embryology. He was originally from Toronto and undertook training with the pathologist Jesse Edwards at the Mayo Clinic before moving to Children’s Hospital Boston. Together with his wife Stella he made seminal contributions to our understanding of the morphology of congenital heart disease. One of his most important contributions was the publication in 1972 of “Segmental approach to diagnosis in congenital heart disease”. Dr. Aldo Castaneda in a recent tribute to Dr. Van Praagh said the following: “Richard impressed me very much, as a renaissance type of individual. He is extremely intelligent and pursues many interests beyond cardiac pathology. His background in philosophy and mathematics, to mention just a few of his many talents, is remarkably broad and deep. His alert and inquisitive mind often races in various direction simultaneously… he is brilliant at conceptualizing embryologic, anatomic sequential developments and deducing their anatomical and functional consequences”.
