Albert Starr

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Albert Starr (born June 1, 1926 in New York City ) is an American heart surgeon and co-inventor of an artificial heart valve as a mitral valve replacement , which he successfully transplanted for the first time in 1960.

Life

Rigid Edwards Mitral Valve Prosthesis (in Science Museum , London)

Albert Starr studied at Columbia College of Columbia University . He completed his medical degree in 1946 and then completed his doctorate in 1949 at Columbia University College for doctors and surgeons.

He initially worked as an intern at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and completed his training as a specialist in general and cardiac surgery at the Bellevue Hospital Center and the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital at Columbia University. From 1952 Starr served in the US Army Medical Corps in Korea , where he performed cardiac surgery in a mobile operations center during the Korean War . After returning to the United States, he was an assistant doctor in surgery at Columbia University until 1957, then moved to Oregon, where he worked as a specialist in open heart surgery at the University of Oregon Medical School (now Oregon Health and Science University ).

Starr was working as an instructor in surgery at the University of Portland when he met the engineer Lowell Edwards (1898-1982) in September 1958 . Edwards had been designing an artificial heart for a long time and introduced it to Starr, but the young doctor found the Edwards prototype too complicated. Instead, the two of them designed a heart valve prosthesis together in just a few weeks: In a stainless steel cage consisting of four brackets and a fixing ring with Teflon knitted fabric, there is a ball made of silicone rubber or stainless steel, which closes and opens the ring like a ball valve as the heart contracts . Starr successfully tested the prosthesis on dogs and after the complications that occurred seemed manageable, the surgeon decided to transplant it into a human. Edwards founded the "Edwards Laboratories" together with three investors to manufacture the heart valves and Starr, with the support of the chief physician of cardiac surgery Herbert E. Griswold, selected patients who were suffering from severe mitral regurgitation .

Starr made a first attempt in August 1960: the patient suffered from severe heart failure and two attempts to repair the heart valves had failed. The patient survived the operation but died of an air embolism shortly after the procedure . On September 21, 1960, Starr made a second attempt and transplanted an artificial heart valve into an elderly patient. The operation succeeded and the patient died 10 years later from a fall from a ladder. Around 250,000 Rigid Edwards heart valves have been used since then.

In the following years, Starr and Edwards continued to improve their model. Together they also developed several cardiac pacemakers.

In 1986, Starr became director of the Institute of Cardiovascular Surgery at Providence St. Vincent Medical Center . In 2011, Starr returned to Oregon Health & Science University as Emeritus Special Advisor and is Professor of Cardiology at the University of Oregon Medical School.

Awards

In 2007 Starr received the renowned American Lasker ~ DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award for outstanding achievements in clinical research.

Publications

Books

  • with Edward A. Lefrak: Cardiac valve prostheses . Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York, 1979.
  • with Bradley J. Harlan, Fredric M. Harwin: Manual of cardiac surgery . Springer-Verlag, New York, 1980 (German first edition: Manual der Herzchirurgie . Springer, Berlin, 1983).
  • with Bradley J. Harlan, Fredric M. Harwin: Illustrated handbook of cardiac surgery . Springer, New York, 1996.

Essays

  • with Lowell M. Edwards: Mitral Replacement: Clinical Experience with a Ball-Valve Prosthesis . In: Annals of Surgery 154, 1961, pp. 726-740.
  • with E. Andreas Agathos: Mitral valve replacement . In: Current Problems in Surgery , Volume 30, No. 6, St. Louis, 1993, pp. 483-592.

literature

  • Allen B Weisse: Heart to heart: the twentieth century battle against cardiac disease. An oral history . Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, 2002.
  • D. K. C. Cooper: Open heart: the radical surgeons who revolutionized medicine . Kaplan Publishers, New York, 2010.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Company history. In: edwards.com. Retrieved March 29, 2018 .
  2. ^ Vinzenz Hombach (Ed.): Interventional Cardiology, Angiology and Cardiovascular Surgery . Schattauer Verlagsgesellschaft, Stuttgart, 2001, p. 258 ( online at Google Books )
  3. ↑ a b Dr. Albert Starr: A Historical Commentary ( Memento of March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), The Society of Thoracic Surgeons, accessed on March 26, 2014 (English)
  4. ↑ Pacemaker Starr Edwards 8114 Ventrac in the Deutsches Museum
  5. ↑ Starr-Edwards 8116 Ventrac pacemaker in the Deutsches Museum
  6. ↑ Dr. Albert Starr takes on new role at OHSU , Oregon Health & Science University press release, July 22, 2011
  7. ↑ Surgeon Albert Starr takes on new role at Oregon Health & Science University, leaving heart program at Providence St. Vincent , The Oregonian, July 22, 2011 (English)
  8. ↑ Albert Lasker Clinical Medical Research Award 2007 Winners, Lasker Foundation , accessed on March 27, 2014 (English)
personal data
SURNAME Starr, Albert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American heart surgeon, professor at the University of Oregon Medical School and co-inventor of the artificial heart valve
DATE OF BIRTH June 1, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City