By Emma Jones
As a teenager, Zane Cohen (MD ’69, PGME ’74) watched his father retreat to a private basement washroom to manage the realities of severe ulcerative colitis. That experience shaped who he is today: a deeply respected gastrointestinal surgeon who has transformed care for patients facing the very kind of health condition his father did.
“Due to my father’s experience, I saw what people with colitis had to go through on a first-hand basis,” says Cohen. “I learned so much about ulcerative colitis and people with stomas from him.”
After earning his medical degree at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Medicine — now the Temerty Faculty of Medicine — Cohen completed his general surgery residency at Toronto General Hospital (TGH). Soon after, he joined an initiative led by Bernard Langer (MD ’56), who envisioned training general surgeons to develop deep expertise in focused areas of practice — surgeons capable of handling a range of “the most difficult of the difficult surgery.” Under this model, Cohen was appointed to grow and expand colorectal surgery.
“When my father really found out what I was going to be doing, he would just start to cry,” says Cohen. “He was so proud.”
Cohen subsequently studied transplantation immunology at St. Mark’s, the National Bowel Hospital and the Royal London Hospital in London, England. In 1977, he returned to U of T and University Health Network’s (UHN’s) TGH as a lecturer, eventually becoming a professor of surgery in 1989. At TGH, Cohen built a team of surgeons focused on treating patients with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs) and developed a colorectal surgery training program at U of T and throughout several Toronto hospitals.
This training program would become one of the first general surgery subspecialties to receive accreditation from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, with nearly 90 fellows participating.
Through the 1970s and 1980s, Cohen also trained with Nils Kock of Sweden’s University of Gothenburg, a renowned surgeon known for procedures that gave patients with stomas control over their bowel movements.
Thanks to this work, it meant that many people could, for the first time, live their lives without relying on an ostomy bag or other equipment.
Following the training in Sweden, Cohen introduced the Kock pouch, and later the pelvic pouch, to the Toronto surgical community. These “sphincter-saving operations,” as Cohen calls them, were life-changing for patients with IBD.
In 1990, Cohen moved his colorectal clinical and academic team from TGH to Sinai Health’s Mount Sinai Hospital to establish a multidisciplinary team and floor dedicated to IBD care. Moving to MSH meant a considerably greater amount of autonomy, Cohen says, but also responsibility to quickly hire and train teams of surgeons, nurses, ostomy caregivers, nutritionists and other workers to oversee the care of complex and delicate IBD cases.
“It was a shock at first, but the staff took this on and really became experts in inflammatory bowel disease,” says Cohen. “They turned it into one of the best floors in the hospital.”
During his time at Mount Sinai, Cohen began dedicating time to gastrointestinal cancer research, eventually developing the largest hereditary cancer research database and screening program in Canada for gastrointestinal cancers. The research emphasized genetic mutation testing and screening to diagnose and prevent fatal cases of inherited colon cancer, influencing screening programs throughout Canada. The work honoured two aunts of Cohen’s who died from rectal cancer.
In 2008, he was honoured with the naming of the Zane Cohen Centre for Digestive Diseasesat Sinai Health, part of honouring Cohen’s legacy as Mount Sinai Hospital’s surgeon-in-chief from 1990 to 2006 and as chair of U of T’s Division of General Surgery from 1999 to 2009.
At U of T’s Division of General Surgery, Cohen also introduced a gender-neutral recruitment policy aimed at attracting top surgical talent — particularly women, who were significantly under-represented in the field. The impact was profound: The proportion of female surgeons in Toronto’s academic teaching hospitals rose from just 2 to 40 per cent, an achievement Cohen regards as one of the most meaningful of his career.
Cohen is a steadfast champion of philanthropy and has funded learner awards at Temerty Medicine that recognize achievement in clinical fellowships, like the Zane Cohen Fellowship Award.He also established the Bernard and Ryna Langer Chair in General Surgery at Temerty Medicine, raising more than $2 million to support surgeon scientist trainees. In 2022, Cohen was invested as a member of the Order of Canada.
“To me, it’s all about the same thing, just giving back and making things happen,” he says. “I think it really is all about giving back to the people and places that helped you.”