Presidential address: Thirteen days in May

Abstract

For many years, I have sat in audiences like this and listened to past Presidents of this Society describe how proud, how honored, and how moved they were to deliver their Presidential address to the Southern Association for Vascular Surgery. I feel the same way, and I can assure you that words cannot adequately convey how I feel at this moment, looking down upon my greatest gift, my family, but I can assure you, it is a moment I will cherish forever. Past Presidents have addressed you on topics they hold particularly dear—the forces that drive them, shape them, and give them the greatest gratification. In my adult life, these forces have been my passion for athletics and my love of the operating room. Athletics is the great equalizer among all men. Formal education, family lineage, and personal assets all go out the window when you “strap it on” and cross the sideline, step onto the court, or climb onto a starting block and rise to the occasion. And once competition begins, there are those athletes whose accomplishments singe the air with their brilliance, defining that individual for all time. When critics called him “a terrified boy, fighting a man,” Mohammad Ali, then known as Cassius Clay, knocked out Sonny Liston. When long-jumpers had not yet jumped 28 ft, Bob Beamon in the rarified air of Mexico City took off for a place in track-and-field history and leaped past 28 ft, to an astounding 29 ft 21⁄2 in, more than a foot over the record, and collapsed over the enormity of his achievement. When no one had ever won five Gold medals in an Olympic Games, Mark Spitz won seven, the highest any Olympic competitor has won for any sport at a single Games, and set seven world records! And what of those high school and college boys who in 1980 beat a Russian National Team, who 1 year earlier had beaten the National Hockey League All Stars? These historic achievements are all very special, but one moment that crystallized all that is good and all that is liberating in sports was Roger Bannister’s breaking of the impenetrable 4-minute mile. To my mind, this was the most inspiring athletic feat of the past half century, because no one, with the exception of Bannister, believed it could be done and because it was accomplished by an amateur athlete who, through perseverance, dedication, and deep commitment to his goal, did the impossible. Like the athlete who steps onto the field of athletic competition, when we, as surgeons, put on our uniform and step to the operating table, we must rise to the challenge and strive for perfection through commitment, dedication, and perseverance. Like the great athletes whose inspiring exploits live forever in the history of athletics, there are surgeons whose accomplishments in the operating room were so brilliant that they forever shine in the history of surgery. These are the giants on whose shoulders we stand today. They have taught us time and again that there really are no limits to human achievement. Think about some of these men. In 1947, when the only treatment for an ischemic limb was sympathectomy or amputation, Sid Dos Santos opened new horizons by reestablishing blood flow to an occluded extremity with the first successful femoral endarterectomy. When fellow surgeons told Charles Dubost (Dubost, Allary, and Oeconomos) in 1951 that it was impossible to replace an aneurysm of the abdominal aorta, he was not listening; he was thinking how he could perform an aortic homograft. And more recently, when we first heard that an Argentinean named Juan Parodi (Parodi, Palmaz, and Barone) excluded an aortic aneurysm through a femoral artery approach, who in this room believed it? Like Bannister’s incredible run, one simple, yet elegant, operation, reported first by Eastcott, Pickering, and Rob, is especially significant because it defined vascular surgery. Until publication of their successful reconstruction of the internal carotid artery, no one really believed an operation could prevent stroke. By fascinating coincidence, the 4-minute mile and the report of the first successful carotid operation both involved men of medicine, happened within a short distance of each other in London, England, and took place within a span of 13 days in May 1954. The history and lore surrounding the Competition of interest: nil. Presented at the Twenty-Sixth Annual Meeting of The Southern Association for Vascular Surgery, Miami Beach, Fla, Jan 16-19, 2002. Reprint requests: David Rosenthal, MD, 315 Boulevard NE, Ste 412, Atlanta, GA 30312 (e-mail: docro@mindspring.com). Submitted Jan 21, 2002; accepted Jan 23, 2002. J Vasc Surg 2002;36:430-6. Copyright © 2002 by The Society for Vascular Surgery and The American Association for Vascular Surgery. 0741-5214/2002/$35.00 0 24/6/126553 doi:10.1067/mva.2002.126553