Kenneth K. Keown, MD: Pioneer of cardiac anesthesiology

Abstract

In 1948, just 2 years out of his anesthesiology residency at Hahnemann Medical College and Hospital, Kenneth K. Keown, MD, was chosen as the anesthesiologist for the procedure that launched the era of intracardlac surgery—a mitral valve commissurotomy. Although surgery on stenotic mitral valves had met with some success as early as the 1920s, its application had lain dormant for some 25 years. In effect, Keown and Hahnemann's Chief of Thoracic Surgery, Charles P. Bailey, MD, who performed the daring operation, launched the acceptance of intracardiac procedures, showing that the heart could be invaded with a successful outcome. Keown and Bailey continued as a team through many innovative cardiac procedures, during which Keown wrote the first monograph on cardiac anesthesia in 1956. Keown was also an early innovator in perfecting methods of inducing hypothermia in cardiac surgery and is also renowned for his pioneering work in cardiac arrhythmias, using lidocaine to counteract fibrillation during cardiac surgery. In 1957, Keown returned to his home state of Missouri to build a department of anesthesiology at the University of Missouri School of Medicine. He advocated allowing only physicians trained in the specialty to administer anesthesia, and he believed firmly that anesthesiology should be a freestanding specialty separate from surgery. He also maintained a vigorous resident recruitment service. Keown held leadership positions in many medical organizations and, during a sabbatical from Missouri, served on the hospital ship Hope in Tunisia. He was Professor and Chief, and later Chairman, Section of Anesthesiology, at the University of Missouri Medical Center, and from 1969 until his death in 1985, he also served as the Center's Medical Director.