Google Honours Heart Surgeon René Favaloro, Pioneer of Coronary Bypass Surgery

12 July 2019

Today Google honoured the 96th Birthday of renowned surgeon René Favaloro by turning him into a 'Google doodle'

We at Wetlab Ltd think it's a wonderful gesture that shows just how important the man was. René was born in 1923 in La Plata, Argentina and became a doctor of medicine in 1949, he was a doctor in La Planta for 12 years in which time he trained nurses, built his own operating room and X Ray and even established the area’s first mobile blood bank.

René decided that he could make a greater contribution to the community by building on his skill in the United States and with few resources and rudimentary English, relocated to the Cleveland Clinic.

In the beginning, the major part of his work involved valvular and congenital diseases; later on, he became interested in other areas. Every day, having hardly finished working in the operating room, Favaloro would spend hours and hours reviewing coronary angiograms and studying coronary arteries.

In early 1967, Favaloro began to consider the possibility of using the saphenous vein in coronary surgery. He put his ideas into practice for the first time in May of that year. The basic principle was to bypass a diseased (obstructed) segment of a coronary artery in order to deliver blood flow distally. The standardization of this technique, called coronary artery bypass surgery, was the fundamental work of his career, and ensured that his prestige would transcend the limits of his country, as the procedure radically changed the treatment of coronary disease. In 1970, he published one of his best-known volumes, Surgical Treatment of Coronary Arteriosclerosis.

CABG techniques have saved countless lives since René pioneered the idea and so we believe that Google's tribute is fitting to such a great man.

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