Who invented bypass surgery?

The procedure was pioneered in 1967 at the Cleveland Clinic by the late Argentine-born physician René Favaloro. Previously, surgeons had used grafted veins only to reconstruct blocked arteries. Dr. Favaloro, however, discovered that the veins could be used to connect the unblocked sections of a coronary artery, effectively bypassing the obstruction. In most bypass surgeries, the heart is stopped and blood is diverted through a heart-lung machine. A surgeon will usually remove a piece of saphenous vein from the lower leg and stitch it around the blocked coronary artery. Dr. Favaloro, the son of a carpenter and a seamstress in a working-class town, had gone to the United States from Argentina in 1960 to undertake postgraduate work in thoracic surgery at the Cleveland Clinic. There, in 1967, he performed the first heart bypass operation, on a 51-year-old woman. Dr. Favaloro returned to Argentina in 1972, apparently turning down a $2-million salary at the Cleveland Clinic. He set about improving the training of heart specialists in Argentina and later at his own medical and research centre, Fundacion Favaloro, which he established in Buenos Aires in 1975. He treated the poor for free. He was also the first surgeon to perform successful heart transplant operations in Argentina. For all his success, Dr. Favaloro fell into despair in his later years and committed suicide at age 77 in 2000.