René Favaloro
René Gerónimo Favaloro (La Plata, July 12, 1923-Buenos Aires, July 29, 2000) was an Argentine inventor, educator and heart surgeon, recognized worldwide for having developed the coronary bypass with use of the great saphenous vein.
He studied medicine at the National University of La Plata, where he received his doctorate with a thesis on ileus. Once received, after passing through the Polyclinic Hospital, he moved to Jacinto Arauz to temporarily replace the local doctor, who he had health problems.
In turn, he read up-to-date medical literature and became interested in thoracic surgery. In the late 1960s, at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, he began to study a technique for using the saphenous vein in coronary surgery. In 1971, he returned to Argentina to operate at the Güemes private sanatorium, at the hands of his friend, interventional cardiologist Dr. Luis de la Fuente, who proposed and convinced him. In the early 1970s he founded his eponymous foundation, at the behest of Dr. De la Fuente.
He was a member of the CoNaDeP (National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons), hosted television programs dedicated to medicine and wrote books. During the 2000 crisis, PAMI contracted an important debt with its foundation, which caused a deep depression in it. On July 29, 2000, after writing a letter to President De la Rúa criticizing the health system and its corruption, he took his life with a shot to the heart.
Trajectory
René Favaloro was born and raised in the city of La Plata (capital of the province of Buenos Aires) with his parents Juan Manuel Favaloro ―carpenter― and Ida Raffaelli de Favaloro ―dressmaker―. He was always committed to knowledge, thanks in part to his maternal grandmother, who passed on his love for nature and the excitement of seeing when the seeds began to bear fruit. He would dedicate his doctoral thesis to her: "To my grandmother Cesárea, who taught me to see beauty even in a poor dry branch."
He attended primary school at school No. 45; A mural was erected in this school in his memory. In 1936 he began his secondary studies at the Rafael Hernández National College; After this stage, he entered the Faculty of Medical Sciences of the National University of La Plata. In the third year he began his internship at the Polyclinic Hospital and began to make contact with patients for the first time. Exceeding what was required by the program, he returned in the afternoons to monitor the evolution of the patients and talk with them.
He also observed the sixth-year students of Rodolfo Rossi or Egidio Mazzei, tenured professors at the Medical Clinic, and also witnessed the surgeries of José María Mainetti and Federico E. B. Christmann, who taught him simplification and standardization techniques which he applied then in cardiovascular surgery, his contribution to operations on the heart and large arteries.
His professional preparation was carried out at the Polyclinic Hospital, where complicated cases from all over the province of Buenos Aires were received. She lived in the hospital during the two years of residency. He graduated in 1949 and an opening immediately arose for an assistant physician, a position he took on an interim basis. Because he didn't want to miss out on the experience, he often stayed active for 48 to 72 hours straight.
Everything suggested that his future was there, at the Polyclinic Hospital, following in the footsteps of his teachers. Coincidentally, in 1949, just received, there was a vacancy for assistant physician. He agreed to the position on an interim basis and a few months later they called him to confirm it. They asked him to fill out a card with his data; but in the last line he had to affirm that he accepted the doctrine of the Peronist government. His qualifications were more than enough merit to obtain the position, so this requirement was humiliating for someone who, like him, had been part of movements to maintain a democratic, freedom and justice line in Argentina, which is why he had even Had to endure jail time. Putting the signature on that card meant betraying all his principles. He replied that he would think about it, but in reality he knew clearly what the answer would be.
Weather in Jacinto Arauz (La Pampa);
At that time, a letter arrived from an uncle, a resident of Jacinto Aráuz, a small town of 3,500 inhabitants in the southeast of the province of La Pampa. He explained that the only doctor who attended the town, Dr. Dardo Rachou Vega, was ill and needed to travel to Buenos Aires for his treatment. He asked his nephew René to replace him, even if it wasn't for two or three months. The decision was not easy. But in the end Favaloro came to the conclusion that a few months go by quickly and that, in the meantime, it was possible that the political situation could change.
He arrived in Jacinto Aráuz in May 1950 and quickly became friends with Dr. Rachou, whose illness turned out to be lung cancer, and Rachou died a few months later. By then, Dr. Favaloro had already immersed himself in the joys and sufferings of that remote region, where the majority dedicated themselves to rural tasks. The life of the settlers was very hard. The roads were impassable on rainy days; the heat, the wind and the sandstone were unbearable in summer and the cold of winter nights did not spare even the most resistant body. Favaloro began to take an interest in each of his patients, in whom he tried to see his soul. In this way he was able to get to know the deep cause of his suffering.
Shortly after, he joined the clinic of his brother, Juan José, also a doctor. He joined the community very soon due to his affable character, his great capacity for work and dedication to his patients. Together they were able to share the work and exchange views on the most complicated cases. During the 12 years that both remained in the town of Jacinto Aráuz, they founded a care center. Infant mortality in the area decreased to almost zero, malnutrition and the number of infections in childbirth were reduced, they created a blood bank of living people with donors who showed up whenever they needed them and they held community talks in which they taught methods to prevent disease.
The Cleveland Clinic Opportunity
Favaloro updated himself with medical publications and took training courses in La Plata. He became interested in cardiovascular interventions, which were beginning to be developed at that time, and in thoracic surgery. He began to see how to finish his stage as a rural doctor and train in the United States, professors José María Mainetti and Alfonso Roque Albanese recommended the Cleveland Clinic . In 1962 he settled in Cleveland (even with limitations in speaking English) and served first as a resident and later on the surgical team in collaboration with local physicians, concentrating his work on valvular and congenital diseases. Later he became interested in other topics, such as coronary angiography and the study of the anatomy of the coronary arteries and their relationship with the heart muscle.
Every day, as soon as he finished his work in the operating room, Favaloro spent hours and hours reviewing coronary angiography and studying the anatomy of the coronary arteries and their relationship with the heart muscle. The laboratory of Dr. Mason Sones, the father of coronary arteriography, had the largest collection of coronary angiography in the United States. At the beginning of the year 1967 he studied the possibility of using the saphenous vein in coronary surgery, practicing with his ideas in May of that year. The standardization of this technique, called bypass (from the English bypass: bypass) or myocardial revascularization surgery, was the main work of his career, which gave him international prestige, since the procedure radically changed the history of coronary disease. In 1970 he edited a book called Surgical treatment on coronary arteriosclerosis , which was also published in Spanish under the name Tratamiento surgical de la arteriosclerosis coronaria .
Return to Argentina;
Favaloro returned to Argentina with the idea of developing a center of excellence similar to that of the Cleveland Clinic, which would combine medical care, research and education, as stated in his resignation letter.
In 1971 he returned to Argentina to operate at the Güemes Sanatorium in the Federal Capital, which was led by Mauricio Barón as president of the institution and by Dr. Luis de la Fuente, in cardiology as an expert in clinical cardiology and in the incipient invasive cardiology. He had previously been encouraged by De la Fuente ―since 1968― to operate on a blind patient who could not travel to the United States.
Dr. Luis de la Fuente was key due to his excellent training in the United States and was fundamental for Favaloro since he made clinical diagnoses and coronary catheterizations. Favaloro did not operate if De la Fuente did not make the diagnoses and catheterizations. This was confirmed by the soccer player Silvio Marzolini to the newspaper Ámbito Financiero.[citation required] Later, De la Fuente was an international pioneer of angioplasty with stent and medicine ―Buenos Aires, year 1999―, of the neoartery, the coronary sinus and stem cells; all advances promoted by De la Fuente and with Favaloro's dream of developing a center of excellence similar to that of the Cleveland Clinic.
Favaloro Foundation
One night in the 1970s, in Buenos Aires, a patient invited Favaloro and Luis de la Fuente to his house for dinner. Late in the morning, the idea arose: to make a foundation. At first Favaloro did not want him to bear his last name, but according to the words of Dr. De La Fuente: & # 34; We will have had a lot of wine, what do I know. They have criticized René a lot, because they say he put his name on himself. It is not true: I was responsible: at that time he was shining all over the world, and if we wanted to get funds to make the foundation it was a way to attract. He did not want to. But that night, with four or five wines, he accepted & # 34;.
In 1975 he founded the Favaloro Foundation for this purpose, together with other collaborators, not only a clinic but also a training center where students from different parts of the world study and where every two years the Cardiology for the Consultant. In 1980 he created the Basic Research Laboratory, maintaining it with his own money for a long time, dependent on the Research and Teaching Department of the Favaloro Foundation. Subsequently, it became the Basic Sciences Research Institute of the University Institute of Biomedical Sciences. This was the basis for the creation, in August 1998, of the Favaloro University.
In December 1983, he was one of the personalities appointed by President Raúl Alfonsín to integrate the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP) and he resigned from it. There are different versions of the reasons for the resignation: Graciela Fernández Meijide says that Favaloro sent a letter citing emotional and work reasons, at the same time that he sent a letter of resignation to Alfonsín in which he was upset and disappointed because he had received María Estela Martinez de Peron; Among the members of CONADEP, the impression was that he had resigned due to the relationship he had with some soldiers who, since 1976, had obtained important monetary contributions for his Foundation. Another version is that he resigned due to deep ideological differences: Favaloro considered that there were crimes committed both by the national State of those years as well as by the subversive organizations that operated clandestinely. Héctor D'Amico affirms that he resigned when he was informed that the Commission did not have powers to investigate terrorist groups close to the government of Isabel Perón, such as the Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance. Favaloro had suggested that the laboratory of doctors Emilio Haas and Luis Verruno was ideal for carrying out histocompatibility analyzes in the country. But the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo did not accept Favaloro's recommendation, arguing that Verruno worked at the Central Military Hospital, where a clandestine detention center had operated during the dictatorship. Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo attributes his resignation to that episode.
In 1992, the Institute of Cardiology and Cardiovascular Surgery of the Favaloro Foundation, a non-profit entity, was inaugurated in Buenos Aires. With the motto: "advanced technology at the service of medical humanism", highly specialized services are provided in cardiology, cardiovascular surgery and heart, lung, cardiopulmonary, liver, kidney and bone marrow transplants, in addition to other areas. Favaloro concentrated his task there, surrounded by a select group of professionals leaving the Güemes Sanatorium.
Favaloro also had a firm position taken on abortion as a specific public health problem that affects different social layers and expressed it on several occasions, including in 1996:
Legalizing does not mean that we are authorizing everyone to make an abortion, but rather, before certain circumstances, the poor little bastard who has no recourse does not fall into that horrifying underworld that can lead her to death. Because you don't die one, you die a lot there. On the contrary, the privileged girl of a family with a guide goes to a prestigious clinic, they do it without anyone knowing it and in the afternoon you can go to a dance if you want because it all happened. That inequality I don't like.René Favaloro in the program "Themes & Debates", led by Norma Morandini in the TN news channel
Suicide
By the year 2000, Argentina was submerged in an economic and political crisis. The Favaloro Foundation was in a difficult situation, as a creditor of large debts from PAMI and other social works, and indebted at around 18 million US dollars, so Favaloro asked the Argentine government for help, without receiving an official response.
I'm spending one of the most difficult moments in my life, the foundation has serious financial problems. In the last time I have become a beggar. My task is to call, call and hit doors to raise some money that will allow us to follow.René Favaloro.
On July 29, 2000 ―the same day as the birthday of his friend and cardiologist Luis de la Fuente, who had convinced him to return to Argentina―, Favaloro locked himself in the bathroom of his house and shot himself. shot in the heart.
After the fatal outcome, it was learned that Favaloro had left seven letters in his apartment whose content was partially revealed. In one of them, addressed to the "competent authorities", he made it clear that he had decided to take his own life, and He explained that the economic crisis that the Favaloro Foundation was going through had been the trigger for his determination, expressing that Argentine society needed his death to become aware of the problems in which it was involved. Favaloro expressed his tiredness of "being a beggar in his own country", after the claims sent to the then president of the Nation Fernando de la Rúa, in which he requested, among other issues, the payment of the million-dollar debts that various companies had with his foundation. social works, being the largest contracted by PAMI.
In another part of the letters, Favaloro wrote:
What I would have to tell of the countless interviews with the trade unionists on duty! Manga de corruptes que vive a costa de los trabajadores y coimean fundamentally with the money of social works that corresponds to medical care. The same happens with PAMI.René Favaloro.
Favaloro made it clear that one of the main reasons that led him to make the decision was the critical financial situation of his Foundation and the impossibility of collecting the debts owed to it by different organizations, including PAMI for 195 invoices issued between 1993 and 1995, when the organization was directed by Víctor Alderete, who during that administration refused to receive them, for which reason they were not registered in the PAMI. The General Sindicatura de la Nación (SIGEN), then headed by Rafael Bielsa, sent a note to PAMI in February of that year asking that Favaloro's claim be accepted and that if the invoices presented by the Foundation cannot be verified, initiate a process of "mandatory conciliation". This last procedure was carried out and the process of verifying those old invoices had begun when Favaloro took his own life.
His body was cremated in the private cemetery Parque de la Gloria in Berazategui, in an intimate ceremony attended by some 30 relatives and friends. Distractive maneuvers were made to evade the press. The ashes were later scattered over the fields of Jacinto Arauz, the town where the doctor began his career.
Books
He has published more than three hundred papers in his specialty. Due to his passion for history, he wrote two research and popularization books on General José de San Martín. He is also the author of the autobiography From the pampas to the United States (the English version, titled The Challenging Dream of Heart Surgery was published in Boston [United States] by Little, Brown and Company in 1994), in which he recalls his ten years of teamwork with eminent medical personalities while at the Cleveland Clinic. This was published for the first time in 1992, reaching the eighth edition in 1996 through Editorial Sudamericana. In addition, his autobiography called Memories of a rural doctor has several editions, the first of which was published in 1980. Finally, his latest book, Don Pedro and education, was published in Buenos Aires by the Favaloro Foundation Publishing Center in 1994.
- 1970: Surgical treatment of coronary arteriosclerosis (Surgical treatment on coronary arteriosclerosis).
- 1980: Memories of a rural doctor. Autobiography.
- 1984: Do you know San Martín?
- 1991: The Memory of Guayaquil.
- 1992: From Pampa to the United States. Autobiography.
- 1994: Don Pedro and education.
- 1996: Conversations on ethics and health. In collaboration with Moszenberg A., Mainetti J., Klimovsky G., Ciocchini H.
- 1997: Recovering the Invisible: Culture Talks. In collaboration with Obiols, G, Presas, M, Burucúa, J. and Piscitelli, A.
- 2000: The Miracle and the Value of Life. In collaboration with Luis Landriscina and Mamerto Menapace.
Tributes
He participated in various societies, was an active member of twenty-six, a corresponding member of four, and an honorary member of another forty-three.
He has received numerous awards throughout his career, including the 1979 John Scott Award from the City of Philadelphia (United States); the creation of the "Dr René G. Favaloro" Chair of Cardiovascular Surgery (Tel Aviv University, in Israel, 1980); the distinction of the Conchita Rábago de Giménez Díaz Foundation (Madrid, Spain, 1982); the Master of Argentine Medicine award (1986); the Cleveland Clinic Foundation's Distinguished Alumnus Award (1987); The Gairdner Foundation International Award, given by the Gairdner Foundation (Toronto, Canada, 1987); the 1989 René Leriche Prize, awarded by the International Society of Surgery; the Gifted Teacher Award, granted by the American College of Cardiology (1992); the Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement (1993); the Konex Brilliant Award for Science and Technology granted by the Konex Foundation in 1993, Doctor Honoris Causa by the Faculty of Health Sciences of the Pedro Henríquez Ureña National University (UNPHU) in 1993 and the Prince Mahidol Award, awarded by His Majesty the King of Thailand (Bangkok, Thailand, 1999). At the Argentine College of Cardiovascular Surgeons based in the city of Buenos Aires, there are two classrooms: one named after René Favaloro and the other after Dr. Alfonso Roque Albanese, both pioneers of cardiovascular surgery.
The last distinction he was awarded was post-mortem, in 2010, when the International Foundation for Young Leaders considered him a "Reference of Humanity".
In March 2019 Google Arts & Culture launched "Había una vez una idea"(in English Once Upon a Try) worldwide. A platform that allows you to meet the people, ideas and stories of the great discoveries and inventions that changed the world. This Google cultural platform includes Dr. René G. Favaloro's bypass technique among the four hundred inventions that changed the history of humanity, and the only one from Latin America found on said platform; In it you can find photos, videos, texts and maps with Street View of the places where he carried out his work: from his studies, his life in the province of La Pampa as a rural doctor, his time at the Cleveland Clinic and his arrival in our country.
An admirer of the prominent doctor tripero, Roberto Oscar Di Marco, had a museum in the city of Río Cuarto dedicated to him. After Di Marco's death, his children Juan Pablo, Belén and Manuel donated its contents to the Museo de Gimnasia y Esgrima de La Plata. The donation includes a life-size sculpture of René Favaloro made by the plastic artist Fernando Pugliese in epoxy resin and fiberglass.
On Avenida Iraola and Calle 118, Paseo del Bosque Platense, La Plata, Argentina, is the Memorial in his honor, in front of the stadium of the club of his loves. It is a large construction with holes through which light passes, benches in areas adjacent to the Memorial and an esplanade with limestone around it.In addition, the Paseo del Bosque was renamed after her.
The city of Belén de Escobar also erected a statue in his honor at the intersection of Carlos Pellegrini and Dr. Travi streets, as in Cleveland, where he was trained.
The elementary school of the Gimnasia y Esgrima La Plata club has the name "Dr. René G. Favaloro Elementary School". There is also a school in his honor renamed Favaloro in Marcos Paz.
In popular culture
He participated on television in educational programs for the population, among which he highlighted the television series Los grandes temas médicos, and presented numerous conferences in Argentina and abroad, on very diverse topics such as medicine, education and society today. In October 2007, in the television program El Gen Argentino , he was a finalist in an election as the Argentine character who best represents the idiosyncrasy of the country and its people.
The Argentine punk rock group Attaque 77 dedicated the song and video clip "Western" to him from the album Antihumano in 2003. It was the first release of the album and it was a tribute to René Favaloro, whose promotional video was made up of shots simulating the vision of a patient lying on the stretcher while the members act as doctors. The Argentine band Bersuit Vergarabat also made mention of his suicide in the song La argentinidad al palo, from the disk of the same name.
The celebrated Argentine folklorist Eduardo Falú —who underwent surgery by Dr. Favaloro— also paid tribute to him with a little dance of his own entitled "The grateful one."
Gastón Portal also decided to include a free version of the doctor's death in the chapter "The doctor's heart" from his Argentine miniseries & # 34; La Última Hora & # 34; (2016).