Benjamin Philosophe, MD, PhD

Dr. Benjamin Philosophe is the surgical director of the Johns Hopkins Comprehensive Transplant Center. He also serves as the lead transplant surgeon at Sibley Memorial Hospital’s Hepatology Multidisciplinary Center.

Dr. Philosophe was the first physician to perform robotic total right and total left hepatic resections in the state of Maryland. He has expanded the application of minimally invasive surgical approaches to other hepatobiliary diseases and has improved outcomes and reduced effects of surgery on these patients. Dr. Philosophe practices out of The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Md., as well as Johns Hopkins Community Physician locations in Bethesda, Md. and Lutherville, Md. He is also affiliated with Suburban Hospital and Johns Hopkins Howard County Medical Center. 

Dr. Philosophe has a wide range of expertise, including cirrhosis; hepatic surgery, hepatitis, hepatobiliary conditions and surgeries; biliary tract surgery and hepatopancreatobiliary surgery; laparoscopic surgeries; vascular surgery; and robotic surgeries. He also has an expertise in various kinds of transplant surgeries, such as kidney, live donor liver, liver and pancreas, as well as various kinds of cancer, such as bile duct, gallbladder, hepatocellular, liver and pancreatic.

Dr. Philosophe earned his medical degree from Boston University School of Medicine. He completed a residency in general surgery at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, followed by a liver transplantation fellowship at the University of Toronto. Dr. Philosophe also completed a transplant surgery fellowship at the University of Maryland, where he went on to work as a professor of surgery and the head of liver transplantation and hepatobiliary surgery. 

Dr. Philosophe is a member of the American Board of Surgery, the Clinical Robotic Surgery Association, the American Society of Transplant Surgeons, the Transplantation Society and the International Liver Transplantation Society. He has earned a Super Doctors Award in general surgery from the Washington Post Magazine, as well as a Top Doctor Award for hepatobiliary surgery and transplant specialists from Baltimore Magazine. Dr. Philosophe has also been repeatedly named one of America’s Top Doctors and one of America’s Top Doctors for Cancer by Castle Connolly. 

Dr. Philosophe has contributed to numerous publications and presentations. His research interests include uncovering the mechanisms that contribute to transplant rejection and determining characteristics that can be used to better predict donor organ function. He has completed pioneering work in developing a scoring system called the Maryland Aggregate Pathology Index (MAPI), which is used by transplant surgeons worldwide to assess the likelihood of a deceased donor’s kidney function after transplantation. MAPI has increased the utilization of donor kidneys and saved many lives.