Coronary artery disease is the most common type of heart disease in the U.S., affecting about 29 million adults. For decades, it was a black box problem: we knew the pipes were clogging, but we couldn't see where, and we certainly couldn't fix them.
In 1967, a team in Cleveland proved that with the right spare parts from the patient’s own body, we could re-engineer survival.
To save a failing heart, surgeons remove a vein from a patient’s leg, then sew it onto the chest to build a detour around a clogged artery.
Despite being performed nearly 340,000 times a year in the US, you can’t ignore how extraordinary coronary bypass surgery is.
Dr. René Favaloro performs the first successful, planned bypass on 51-year-old woman at the Cleveland Clinic.
Twenty-five health innovations that changed the world.
How does a country doctor from a small village in Argentina end up revolutionizing American surgery?
In 1962, René Favaloro wrote letters to the Cleveland Clinic asking to study there. They went unanswered. So, he simply showed up in Ohio, unannounced and uninvited, with little money and limited English. Dr. Donald Effler, the head of thoracic surgery, was building a high-spec lab and needed someone obsessed enough to bridge the gap between new imaging technology and the operating table.
This is the U.S. as a Talent Platform. When we build the world’s best infrastructure, the imaging, the machines, and the culture of risk-taking, the world’s most ambitious problem solvers show up to use it. The American ecosystem enabled a global victory with coronary bypass.