“7 wise men of humanity from the golden decade of cardiovascular surgery”. With this name, the First Cardiovascular Surgery Clinic of the “Henry Dunant Hospital Center” decided to recognize great figures in this area and the Argentine heart surgeon Federico Benetti was one of them.
Who began his career as a doctor in 1973, two decades later he made innovations that are now were recognized in Athens, Greece. The award was presented to the Argentinean in an event held within the framework of a symposium at the Former Parliament Hall of Greece, with the seven prominent cardiac surgeons as guests.
In ancient times, in Greece The “Seven Sages” were recognized as famous philosophers, statesmen and legislators of that time. It included Bias of Priene, Cleobulus of Lindos, Periander of Corinth, Pittacus of Mytilene, Chilon of Sparta, Solon and Thales. The directors of the First Cardiovascular Surgery Clinic of the “Henry Dunant Hospital Center” were inspired by that distinction to recognize the contribution of 7 specialists in cardiovascular medicine in the 1990s.
The other leading experts were Gianni Angelini, who in 1992 was appointed British Heart Foundation Professor of Cardiac Surgery at the University of Bristol. They were also Christopher Salerno, a world leader in cardiac surgery and an expert in performing complex surgical interventions on patients suffering from a wide range of cardiac conditions in the United States; and Hisayoshi Sumafrom Japan, along with other renowned doctors from the United States, India and Italy.
Dr. Benetti resides in the city of Rosario, Santa Fe, and traveled to Greece to receive the recognition, a distinction that was made for the first time in the history of medicine.
With his innovations in techniques and technologies, Benetti has obtained more than 30 invention patents and has made more than 500 presentations and publications in his specialty throughout his career.
It also centers and trained surgeons in 45 countries around the world. He has been a visiting professor at various universities around the world and has recognitions such as the R/D from the Chicago Academy of Sciences and Arts for the 100 inventions that modified the lives of human beings.
And he is even one of the 50 doctors in the world who has a monument in the Hippocratic Foundation on the island of Kos in Greece.
“I was born and had an absolutely normal childhood,” he said during a Ted talk that took place in Rosario. But when he was a teenager, he already knew that he wanted to dedicate himself to cardiovascular medicine.”
At 14 years old, “I didn’t want to be a doctor, I wanted to be a heart surgeon. This was a bit strange, but all he did was constantly think about how to work on the heart. So, he insisted all the time,” he said.
On weekends he sought to learn more about cardiac functioning, which is why he captured toads to see what was happening in their hearts. “No one took me to see a heart operation in a hospital,” she argued.
One of the most recognized events of his work was related to the low effectiveness of the use of the heart-lung machine during cardiovascular interventions. “My mind was constantly thinking about having to do something to improve what was constantly worrying us,” he recalled.
To provide a solution, he took into account that the coronary arteries are those that feed the heart and are on its surface. That’s why he developed the coronary bypass without putting the patient on the heart-lung machine, giving birth to coronary surgery without the use of extracorporeal circulation. But he went further and then performed an operation with a video camera, “in such a way as to connect the bypass, and the patient could walk out.”
In 1996, Benetti founded the International Society of Less Invasive Cardiac Surgery (ISMICS) and in 1990, his own foundation to promote research, teaching and the enrichment of medical science in the branch of cardiology and cardiovascular surgery. Far from remaining with these achievements, who is now part of one of the “7 wise men of humanity from the golden decade of cardiovascular surgery” is now developing a outpatient coronary surgery technique.
