On July 12, 1923, Dr. René Favaloro was born in La Plata.
He was the first surgeon to perform a myocardial revascularization operation, also called a “bypass.”
Favaloro spent his childhood in the “El Mondongo” neighborhood, together with his carpenter father and dressmaker mother.
His higher studies were made at the Faculty of Medical Sciences of the National University of La Plata.
In turn, his professional practice was carried out at the Polyclinic Hospital, where the cases considered to be the most complicated in the entire province of Buenos Aires were received.
However, his path as a doctor forked towards the rural area, in 1950.
At the request of an uncle, Favaloro had to travel to Jacinto Arauz, a small town of three thousand five hundred inhabitants in the province of La Pampa. There he exercised his vocation as a rural doctor.
In the humid pampa, Favaloro spent twelve years with another doctor, his brother Juan José. They founded a care center, reduced malnutrition and infant mortality, as well as created a blood bank.
Then in 1962, he settled in the United States at the age of 39, where he joined the surgical team at the Cleveland Clinic.
In the United States, his medical work focused on valvular and congenital diseases. At the same time, the anatomy of the coronary arteries were another of Favaloro’s learning axes of study.
The Argentine doctor was impregnated with so much knowledge that he ended up teaching. In that process he developed the Bypass technique, the main work of his entire career, with unanimous worldwide recognition.
His tenacious research radically changed the history of coronary heart disease. Starting in the 1960s, the world of science embraced the talent of Dr. René Favaloro forever.
Before completing a decade in the United States, the Argentine scientist returned to Argentina in 1971 with the idea of developing a center of excellence similar to the Cleveland Clinic.
His goal was to combine medical care, research, and education. That idea was transformed, four years later, into the Favaloro Foundation, inaugurated in 1975.
With professional prestige as his best presentation in all the surroundings, Favaloro inaugurated in the 90 other health centers: the Cardiology Institute and the Cardiovascular Surgery Institute of his Foundation. Both in Buenos Aires.
In those years he made his opinion public, for example, regarding abortion. With an avant-garde vision, Favaloro understood it as a public health problem.
Favaloro was a fan of Gimnasia La Plata, an admirer of General José de San Martín and passionate about folk music, from where the composer Eduardo Falu dedicated a song to him.
René Favaloro was part of the gallery of the most prestigious Argentines in the history of the country.
Despite the abrupt end of his life in 2000 that he himself carried out, his trail of humility and capacity, of prestige and chivalry, remains.
Both in Argentina and in the scientific world.
On July 14, 1923, Dr. René Favaloro was born in La Plata.
The story is also news on Radio Perfil. Script by Andrés Ruíz and locution by Pita Fortín.
by Radio Profile
