Sir Magdi Habib Yacoub is a British-Egyptian cardiothoracic surgeon. He is Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Imperial College London.
Yacoub’s major achievements may be summarised:
- establishing heart transplantation in UK and becoming the world’s leading transplant surgeon
- establishing and becoming a master of the ‘Ross Procedure’ or pulmonary autograft, including a randomised control trial
- pioneering the modern arterial switch operation
- promoting the use of left ventricular assist devices for the ‘Bridge to Recovery’ and establishing the largest experience in the world
- establishing the Heart Science Centre, Magdi Yacoub Institute for research into the causes and treatment of cardiac disease
- establishing the Chain of Hope Charity which provides cardiothoracic surgical care to the developing world
- championing academic medicine, humanitarian surgery and becoming an example of a minority surgeon who has flourished in an institution-dominated field.
He was involved in the restart of British heart transplantation in 1980 (there had been a moratorium following the series of three performed by Donald Ross in 1968), carried out the first British live lobe lung transplant and went on to perform more transplants than any other surgeon in the world. A 1980 patient, Derrick Morris, was Europe’s longest surviving heart transplant recipient until his death in July 2005.
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