ACS Honorary Fellowship
Citation for Professor Rene G. Favaloro (1990)
Mr. President, it is an honor to present Professor Rene Geronimo Favaloro of Buenos Aires, Argentina, for Honorary Fellowship in the American College of Surgeons.
He was born in La Plata, Argentina, to what he describes as a working class mother and father, a dressmaker and a carpenter. It is to them that he ascribes the two most important lessons of his life: to behave in an ethical manner, and to work with maximum intensity to achieve one's objective.
Following graduation from medical school, he and his brother established a 22-bed clinic in the village of Jacinto Arauz; the clinic provided the primary care and trauma surgery for an area 150 kilometers in radius. In retrospect, he believes that his experience as a country doctor molded his subsequent career by instilling in him a profound respect for every patient irrespective of social, economic, religious, or political background.
After 12 years in rural community practice, he went to the Cleveland Clinic, first as a trainee, and then as a staff member, where he contributed so magnificently to cardiac surgery.
Professor Favaloro is viewed by our colleagues in thoracic surgery as "Dr. Coronary Artery Bypass". Early in his thoracic surgery career, he achieved acclaim in North America and abroad for his work in indirect internal mammary artery revascularization; perfection of the technique of saphenous vein grafting, multiple grafting, simultaneous valve replacement, and coronary artery bypass; and the use of the binocular loupe for coronary artery surgery. Although recognized by his specialist colleagues for his seminal work on an operation now performed a quarter of a million times annually in this country alone, he eschews all claim of priority. Instead, he points to the contributions of others such as Carrel, Sabiston, and Garrett.
In 1970, after nine years, he made what he considers to be the most important decision of his life -to return to his native Argentina. He was successively director of an Institute of Cardiology and Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery in Buenos Aires, professor of cardiovascular surgery at El Salvador School of Medicine, and chair of thoracic and cardiovascular surgery at Cordoba University School of Medicine. His honors and honorary degrees at home and abroad are too many to enumerate.
He has dedicated his career to teaching and the support of the basic sciences related to surgery. Two hundred and forty fellows have trained with him, a third of whom now practice in Latin American countries. His contributions to medical science include more than 300 publications. Despite his renown as a surgeon, it is his wish to be remembered as a teacher.
His hobbies are history and gardening. One of his books is about the hero San Martin, the Argentinean George Washington. He collects seeds wherever he travels and cultivates them at home in a garden that produces in season American sweet corn.
He raised his late brother's four children, two of whom are physicians. One of them is a cardiac surgeon and practices with him.
Professor Favaloro looks back with gratitude to the freedom he was given to develop his ideas by Dr. Donald Effler, to the support of the late Dr. Mason Sones, and to the stimulating clinical and intellectual environment provided by the Cleveland Clinic.
Mr. President, it is with great pleasure that I present Professor Rene Favaloro, a citizen of Argentina, humanitarian, scholar, surgeon, and teacher, for Honorary Fellowship in the American College of Surgeons.
James V. Maloney, Jr., MD, FACS,
Los Angeles, CA
