Ann Thorac Surg 2005;80:2415-2418
© 2005 The Society of Thoracic Surgeons
Our surgical heritage
Transplantation at 100 Years: Alexis Carrel, Pioneer Surgeon
Robert M. Sade, MD
*
Institute of Human Values in Health Care, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina
* Address correspondence to Dr Sade, Department of Surgery, 96 Jonathan Lucas St, Suite 409, PO Box 250612, Charleston, SC29425; (Email: sader@musc.edu).
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The Beginning of Transplantation
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On December 23, 1954, Ronald Herrick became the first healthy human being to subject himself to a major surgical procedure for the benefit of someone other than himself. He was the donor of a kidney to his identical twin brother, Richard, who was dying of end-stage renal disease. His brother's donated kidney allowed Richard to survive for another 8 years [1]. The surgeon, Dr Joseph Murray of the Peter Brigham Hospital in Boston, had done extensive preliminary experimental work and continued to be a leader not only in clinical transplantation, but also in the study of the immune phenomena surrounding transplantation. Dr Murray, along with E. Donnall Thomas, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1990, "for their discoveries concerning organ and cell transplantation in the treatment of human disease" [2].
Last year, the semi-centennial anniversary of the procedure was widely celebrated as the beginning of clinical organ transplantation. Although the 1954 procedure launched clinical transplantation, the science of organ transplantation actually began a half-century earlier. The year 2005 marks the centennial anniversary of Alexis Carrel's publication of his first article on successful organ transplantation in October 1905 [3].
The critical technical prerequisite for successful transplantation surgery was the development of techniques for suturing blood vessels. Such methods had not been developed yet in 1894 when the president of France, Sadi Carnot, was assassinated in Lyon. Carnot was stabbed in the abdomen and bled to death from a laceration of the portal vein. Surgical opinion held that the president could not have been saved because of the nature of his injury. A young medical student at the University of Lyon, Alexis Carrel, argued to the contrary that Carnot could have been saved if surgeons could repair blood vessels as they repaired . . . [Full Text of this Article]
Copyright © 2005 by The Society of Thoracic Surgeons.
