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René Favaloro, creator of an operation that saved millions of lives
July 12 marks the 96th anniversary of the birth of the prestigious Argentine surgeon René Favaloro, creator of coronary bypass, a cardiovascular surgical technique that has saved millions of lives worldwide. Which is considered one of the 400 most important inventions in the history of mankind and within the Argentine Top 10.
He was honored by Google with a doodle, in recognition of his contribution to medical knowledge. It was May 9, 1967, at the Cleveland Clinic, in the United States, that a 51-year-old woman underwent surgery using a new technique that would revolutionize cardiology worldwide: an aortocoronary bypass operation.
At the head of the surgical team that performed this medical feat was the Argentine surgeon, Dr. René Favaloro. Fifty-two years later, the revolutionary technique is still in force, saving lives every minute. Between 600,000 and 700,000 such surgeries are performed each year in the United States alone.
After finishing high school, René Favaloro entered the Faculty of Medical Sciences of the National University of La Plata. From his third year of studies he began to attend the Polyclinic Hospital on a voluntary basis. After graduating in 1949, at the request of his uncle, he performed a temporary substitution in a rural town in La Pampa called Jacinto Aráuz. However, that substitution was extended for 12 years.
Due to his interest in thoracic surgery, he was recommended to do a cardiovascular fellowship in the United States. With few resources and a beginning English, he decided to travel to Cleveland. He entered as a resident doctor and later was part of the surgical team, in collaboration with medical eminences of his time.
At the beginning of 1967, René Favaloro began to think about the possibility of using the saphenous vein in coronary surgery. He put his ideas into practice for the first time in May of that same year. The standardization of this technique, called bypass or myocardial revascularization surgery, was the fundamental work of his career. His prestige transcended worldwide as this procedure radically changed the history of coronary disease.
He personally took charge of recounting it in depth in his book Surgical Treatment on Coronary Arteriosclerosis, published in 1970 and edited in Spanish under the name of Surgical Treatment of Coronary Arteriosclerosis.
