Pioneers of Cardiac Surgery

Alain F. Carpentier, MD, PhD

322 Pioneers of Cardiac Surgery Alain F. Carpentier, MD, PhD (b. 1933) One day when I was going through the entrance to the hospital, the idea of a prosthetic ring came to me in a few seconds. I developed a prosthetic ring. The idea was to rebuild the valve orifice, to remodel it, rather than just narrow it. — On the technique of mitral valve repair Interviewed September 16, 2000 I was born in 1933 in Toulouse, France, but I grew up in different cities because my father was an engineer who constructed roads and bridges. We moved every five years, so although I was born in Toulouse, I grew up in Ile-de-France in the center of France. During the Second World War, the Germans wanted my father to construct an airfield, and he didn’t want to, so we moved to Algeria . I spent four years there during the war, and then we came back to eastern France, where my father reconstructed the city of Epinal. These were the conditions in which I grew up. I became interested in medicine during the early German occupation, when we were living in the center of France, because I developed peritonitis, which I remember very well. I was eight years old, and I was operated on by a surgeon just one or two hours before he had to leave to go to another place. If this surgeon had not delayed his departure, I would have been dead, because there was no other surgeon in the city. It was a very painful operation, but as a result of that experience , I decided to become a surgeon. I started medical school in the east of France, in Nancy, but then my parents moved to Paris, and I finished medical school there. I had all of my surgical training in Paris. I had decided to become a surgeon from the very beginning, so there was never a question of medicine or obstetrics. I went to medical school so that I could do surgery, the only question being the type of surgery. I was fortunate to work with Robert Chudet, an orthopedic surgeon who is very well-known as the inventor of the first artificial hip. We had an excellent relationship, and he wanted me to continue working with him. He was a marvelous surgeon and a very important innovator with a new idea every minute; it was really something to see. I already had a few ideas at that time, so he wanted me to stay in orthopedics. During my residency program, I had to spend six months in cardiac surgery. I selected the service of Charles Dubost, who was, of course, the leading cardiac surgeon in France and Europe at that time. At the end of the six months, he said, “OK, I’ve decided that you are going to stay with me.” I had a difficult time choosing between Dubost and Chudet. Both of them were really remarkable surgeons and excellent human beings. I decided to stay with cardiac surgery, because I could see that in 1965 there were still a lot of new things going on. All of my subsequent training was with Dubost. He was a marvelous person, looking and behaving like a Roman emperor, but we had an excellent partnership, and he gave me strong support Valvular Heart Surgery 323 and the necessary freedom to develop what I wanted to do. When Charles Dubost heard Dr. Blalock give the first lecture on the Blue Baby operation , he decided then and there to give up general surgery and devote himself entirely to vascular and cardiac surgery. Not only did he decide that, but he also invited Dr. Blalock to Paris in 1947 after the war. Blalock came to the Hospital Broussais and did the very first Blue Baby operation in France, and Charles Dubost assisted him. He was influenced by the personality of Dr. Blalock. I still have photographs showing Blalock operating on a child at Broussais. After Dr. Blalock’s visit, Dr. Francis d’Allaines was able to raise funds to build the clinic at Broussais Hospital , where I have been working most of my life. I began full-time cardiac surgery in 1965 and extracorporeal circulation was just beginning , and in the surgical world there were no frontiers between countries. I visited the U.S. frequently, and when something new happened in the U.S., in the following months it was transferred to France. In 1965 we operated...