Richard Lillehei

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Richard Carlton Lillehei (born December 10, 1927 in Minneapolis , † April 1, 1981 in Sanibel Island ) was an American surgeon . He was particularly interested in organ transplantation , the cryopreservation of tissue and the pathophysiological basis of shock . In 1966, he and other doctors performed the first pancreas transplant on a patient.

Life

Richard Lillehei, who was born in Minneapolis in 1927 to a dentist , graduated from the University of Minnesota with a degree in medicine in 1948 . He received his doctorate in 1960 from the same university and was later active there until his death as a professor of surgery, particularly in the field of organ transplantation . In the course of his career he published around 350 scientific publications .

His main research interests were the investigation of the pathophysiological processes involved in the development of shock , the cryopreservation of biological tissue and the transfer of organs . From 1959 he was one of the first doctors to investigate the feasibility of intestinal transplants in animal studies . On December 17, 1966, he and his colleague William Kelly carried out the first transfer of a pancreas from a deceased donor to a patient in combination with a kidney transplant . In his opinion, a particular problem with transplanting the pancreas was that it is the only one of the large organs in the body that is more difficult to remove from the donor body than it is to surgically transfer it to the recipient.

Richard Lillehei died in 1981 at the age of 53 of a heart attack while jogging near his condo on Sanibel Island , Florida . He was married and had four children. His brother Clarence Walton Lillehei , who also worked as a surgeon at the University of Minnesota, carried out the first successful open heart operations in the first half of the 1950s , making him one of the founders of heart and thoracic surgery . Founded in 1978 at the University of Minnesota, “C. Walton and Richard C. Lillehei Chair of Cardiovascular Surgery "(English C. Walton and Richard C. Lillehei Professorship in Cardiovascular Surgery ) is named after both brothers.

literature

  • John C. Norman: Requiem for Richard Lillehei. In: Cardiovascular Diseases. Bulletin of the Texas Heart Institute. Vol. 8, No. 2, 1981, ISSN  0093-3546 , pp. 276-298.
  • Richard Carlton Lillehei, MD. 1927-1981. Obituary in: Transactions of the One Hundred Twenty-First Meeting of the American Surgical Association. JB Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia 1981, ISSN  1059-5538 , p. 58.
  • Luis H. Toledo-Pereyra, David ER Sutherland: Richard Carlton Lillehei: Transplant and Shock Surgical Pioneer. In: Journal of Investigative Surgery. 24 (2) /2011.Informa Healthcare, ISSN  0894-1939 , pp. 49-52

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Lillehei, Richard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lillehei, Richard Carlton (full name); Lillehei, Richard C.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American surgeon specializing in organ transplantation
DATE OF BIRTH December 10, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Minneapolis
DATE OF DEATH April 1, 1981
Place of death Sanibel Island