Transplantation at 100 Years: Alexis Carrel, Pioneer Surgeon

Abstract

n December 23, 1954, Ronald Herrick became the first ealthy human being to subject himself to a major urgical procedure for the benefit of someone other than imself. He was the donor of a kidney to his identical win brother, Richard, who was dying of end-stage renal isease. His brother’s donated kidney allowed Richard to urvive for another 8 years [1]. The surgeon, Dr Joseph urray of the Peter Brigham Hospital in Boston, had one extensive preliminary experimental work and coninued to be a leader not only in clinical transplantation, ut also in the study of the immune phenomena surounding transplantation. Dr Murray, along with E. Donall Thomas, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology r Medicine in 1990, “for their discoveries concerning rgan and cell transplantation in the treatment of human isease” [2]. Last year, the semi-centennial anniversary of the proedure was widely celebrated as the beginning of clinical rgan transplantation. Although the 1954 procedure aunched clinical transplantation, the science of organ ransplantation actually began a half-century earlier. The ear 2005 marks the centennial anniversary of Alexis arrel’s publication of his first article on successful organ ransplantation in October 1905 [3]. The critical technical prerequisite for successful translantation surgery was the development of techniques or suturing blood vessels. Such methods had not been eveloped yet in 1894 when the president of France, Sadi arnot, was assassinated in Lyon. Carnot was stabbed in he abdomen and bled to death from a laceration of the ortal vein. Surgical opinion held that the president ould not have been saved because of the nature of his njury. A young medical student at the University of yon, Alexis Carrel, argued to the contrary that Carnot ould have been saved if surgeons could repair blood essels as they repaired other tissues. In 1896, Carrel was n intern at Lyon’s Hotel Dieu, and he was aware that atthieu Jaboulay at the University of Lyon had successully repaired a divided carotid artery experimentally, sing everting interrupted mattress sutures. However, is method did not work in the repair of small blood essels. In that year, Carrel started his own experiments, nd before long his work gained local notoriety. He ecognized that extremely fine needles and thread were eeded, and he found what he needed, but not in surgical