The Google doodle today is to honor the life and contributions of René Favaloro, an Argentine cardiac surgeon best known for his pioneering work on coronary artery bypass surgery. The Doodle has an illustration of himself and a heart.
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.
He was born on July 12, 1923 in La Plata, Argentina and died at the age of 77 on July 29, 2000 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The cause of his death was suicide by gunshot after his foundation was in $18 million in debt.
Google wrote "We’ is more important than ‘I.’ In medicine, the advances are always the result of many efforts accumulated over the years,” wrote Dr. René Favaloro, the Argentinian surgeon who introduced coronary artery bypass surgery into clinical practice and is celebrated in today’s Doodle."
Forum discussion at Twitter.
