Donald Church Balfour (August 22, 1882 – July 25, 1963) was a Canadian medical educator and surgeon who specialized in gastrointestinal surgery.
[1] Balfour joined the Mayo brothers' practice in Rochester, Minnesota, in 1907, initially as a pathology assistant.
[3] In 1909 he became a junior surgeon and in 1912 he was promoted to head of a division of general surgery in what is now known as the Mayo Clinic.
[2] Balfour worked primarily in gastrointestinal surgery, although he published papers in other surgical fields such as tonsillectomy and thyroidectomy.
He designed various surgical instruments including abdominal retractors, operating tables and operating room mirrors; one of his landmark papers included a design for a stent to perform anastomosis between parts of the large intestine.