John W. Kirklin
John Webster Kirklin ( born April 5, 1917 in Muncie ( Indiana), † 21 April, 2004 Birmingham ( Alabama)) was an American heart surgeon.
Life
Kirklin was the son of the director of radiology at the Mayo Clinic. He studied at the University of Minnesota (Bachelor 1938) and made his MD in 1942 Medical degree from Harvard University magna cum laude. His specialist training he started at University of Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia ( Internship ), was then a Fellow in surgery at the Mayo Clinic from 1943 ( Residency ) and began training as a neurosurgeon at O'Reilly General Hospital in Missouri. 1944-1946 he worked as a neurosurgeon in the U.S. Army, most recently in rank of Captain. Subsequently, he continued his medical training ( residency ) at the Mayo Clinic, where he spent six months at Boston Children's Hospital as an Assistant Resident in Pediatrics at the surgeon Robert E. Gross. There, he moved from neurosurgery to cardiac surgery.
From 1950 he was back at the Mayo Clinic. In the 1950s he improved there, the heart -lung machine (originally developed by John Heysham Gibbon, who thus in 1953 carried out a first operation on humans, but in the meantime abandoned by it again ) to the extent that they are used routinely, for example, during cardiac surgery could. Among other things, he developed with colleagues an oxygenator and a pump ( Mayo - Gibbon pump ). He led so one of the first in 1955 through a series of open-heart surgery. He was also a pioneer in the development of surgical techniques in the surgical treatment of a variety of congenital heart defects (for which he was known as a specialist ), during cardiac valve replacement and coronary heart disease. In 1960 he became a professor in 1964 and head of surgery at the Mayo Clinic. In 1966 he went as professor and head of surgery at the University of Alabama (UAB) Medical School in Birmingham ( Alabama), where he developed strongly the system of associated hospitals, established its own system of medical training and the UAB in the United States a center made for heart surgery. A clinic founded by him there is named in his honor ( built by architect IM Pei ). In 1982 he resigned at the UAB of line, but still operated until 1989.
In 1972 he was awarded the Lister Medal. He was an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons (1969) and the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland. He was more honorary doctorates ( Hamline University, Munich, Georgetown University, St. Paul ( Minnesota), Indiana University, Bordeaux, Marseille). He was a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He received the Research Achievement Award from the American Heart Association, the Medallion for Scientific Achievement from the American Surgical Association, the Rudolph Matas Award in Vascular Surgery and the Ray C. Fish Award from the Texas Heart Institute (1977). In 1967 he held the Caldwell Lecture at Harvard University (The Tetralogy of Fallot ).
He was editor of the Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery and was president of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery. He has published as author or co-author of over 700 works. He is also known for his two-volume textbook Cardiac surgery: morphology, diagnostic criteria, natural history, techniques, results, and indications (Churchill Livingstone, 1956) with Brian Barratt - Boyes.
He was with the doctor Margaret K. Kirklin (died 2009) married, had two sons and a daughter. His wife was academic director of the training program for surgeons, the Kirklin 1967 einrichtete at UAB. His son James Kirklin was even cardiac surgeon and Director of Heart Transplantation at the UAB.