René Gerónimo Favaloro

René Gerónimo Favaloro was an Argentine cardiac surgeon credited with developing the modern coronary artery bypass graft procedure. Born on 14 July 1923 in La Plata, Buenos Aires Province, he died by suicide on 29 July 2000 in Buenos Aires at the age of 77.

He earned his medical degree at the National University of La Plata in 1949 and worked for twelve years as a country doctor in Jacinto Aráuz, La Pampa, where he organised local healthcare and trained nurses. In 1962 he travelled to the United States and joined the Cleveland Clinic, where he became a member of its Department of Cardiovascular Surgery.

On 9 May 1967 at the Cleveland Clinic he performed what is generally accepted as the first planned saphenous-vein coronary artery bypass graft, anastomosing a leg vein to the right coronary artery to bypass an obstructed segment. The technique he refined and published in the years that followed became the standard surgical treatment for coronary artery disease and has since been performed millions of times worldwide.

In 1971 he returned to Argentina and founded the Favaloro Foundation, a non-profit centre devoted to cardiovascular research, training, and care. Confronted by the foundation's mounting debts during Argentina's late-1990s economic crisis and unable to obtain government support, he took his own life in his Buenos Aires apartment, leaving public letters that drew attention to the country's healthcare crisis.

The name René is the French and Spanish form of Renatus, from the Latin meaning "reborn". He carried it through a surgical career that gave countless patients a renewed lease on life.