The British surgeon Roy Calne, who performed the first liver transplant in Europein 1968, died on Saturday at the age of 93, his family reported this Sunday.
In a statement, the family reported that the surgeon and emeritus professor at the University of Cambridge, born in 1930, died of heart failure on Saturday night in Cambridge, southeast England.
According to statements by his son Russel to the BBC, Roy Calne had a “brooding and slightly eccentric” personality. and was “a wonderful father of six children”, who were “very proud” of him.
The specialist performed the first liver transplant in Europe, performed at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, on May 2, 1968, on a 46-year-old woman suffering from liver cancer, shortly after the first liver transplant in the world, in the United States.United States.
The Portuguese surgeon João Rodrigues Pena was part of his teamhaving been responsible, in 1992, for the first liver transplant program in Portugalat the Curry Cabral Hospital, in Lisbon.
Between 1967 and 1969, the Portuguese surgeon Eduardo Barroso also worked with Roy Calne, in Cambridge, while he was on a scholarship from the Gulbenkian Foundation, in the university’s Department of Surgery and in the Surgery and Transplants service of that hospital.
Roy Calne became interested in organ transplantation in the 1950s, partly inspired by his father’s work as a car mechanic, the surgeon later acknowledged, but at the time he was told the procedure would be impossible.
Like the American Thomas Starzl, who performed the procedure previously, the British surgeon tried to develop treatments to prevent organ rejection, since at first many of the patients ended up dying.
The recipient of the first liver transplant performed in Europe would die two months later due to an infection derived from the immunosuppressive drugs she was administered to prevent organ rejection.
Since then, Calne has focused on discovering new ways to prevent organ rejection, having helped develop the breakthrough drug cyclosporine and being the first doctor to administer it to transplant patients.
Anti-organ rejection drugs have increased the chances of survival for transplant patients, saving thousands of lives since their widespread use in the 1980s.
Calne also participated in the world’s first triple organ transplant (liver, lung and heart) in 1986, and in 1994 performed a six-organ transplant: liver, kidney, stomach, duodenum, small intestine and pancreas.
In 1986, Queen Elizabeth II awarded the surgeon the title of Sir.
Source: TSF
