Following retirement from the National Health Service (NHS), he continued to operate on children through his charity, Chain of Hope. In 2008, he co-founded the Magdi Yacoub heart foundation, which launched the Aswan Heart project.
Early life and educationedit
Magdi Habib Yacoub was born on the 16th of November in 1935[1] in Bilbeis, El Sharqia, Egypt to a Coptic Christian family,[2][3] and spent his childhood moving around a number of different small towns.[4] His father was a surgeon, who later worked in public health. He died in 1958.[4] Yacoub later recalled that both his father and the death of his youngest aunt at age 22 years from an uncorrected mitral stenosis during childbirth[5] inspired him to study medicine and cardiology, saying that “this young woman would not have died if we had had access to facilities which were then available in a few centres around the world”.[6][7]
In 1957, Yacoub graduated in medicine from Cairo University and completed two years of residencies in surgery.[4] In 1961[8] or 1962[6] he moved to Britain to study for his fellowship while working under Sir Russell Brock, consultant surgeon at Guy's Hospital.[6]
Heart valve surgeryedit
In 1964, he was appointed rotating surgical senior registrar to the National Heart and Chest Hospitals,[9] where he worked with cardiothoracic surgeon Donald Ross. Here, they worked on repairing heart valves in people with severe valvular heart disease and heart failure.[9][10][11] Four of their cases, operated on between December 1965 and October 1967, were reported on in the British Medical Journal (1968) in an article titled "Too ill for cardiac surgery?". Three had severe aortic valve disease and one had rheumatic heart disease with multiple affected valves. All four had a poor prognosis with death expected within a few days and all four survived surgery.[9][10] He carried out a number of Ross procedures, where the diseased aortic valve is replaced with the person's own pulmonary valve, particularly in growing children.[12][13] It became a popular alternative to the surgical treatment of aortic valve disease in young adults and avoided the need for anticoagulation and repeated operations. Yacoub modified the operation by planning remodelling of the autograft root, the Ross-Yacoub procedure,[13][14][15][16] performed in carefully selected people.[17] At a time when cardiologists may have been reluctant to refer for surgery, Yacoub's search for operable people earned him the name "Magdi's midnight stars".[9]
Later, his application for a job at the Royal Brompton Hospital was turned down.[18] In 1968, he moved to the United States[6] and the following year he became Instructor and then Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago.[4]
Harefield Hospitaledit
In 1973, he became a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at Harefield Hospital,[6] West London, opened in 1921 as a TBsanatorium of single storey pavilions typical for such a hospital.[19][18] He later recalled that "I was tempted to stay in Chicago, as I was interested in the research they were doing there, but I had already accepted the position at Harefield before going to the US, so I was honour bound to return".[6] At Harefield, he worked closely with Rosemary Radley-Smith, consultant in paediatric cardiology.[18]
As a visiting professor to the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Yacoub, Fabian Udekwu, C. H Anyanwu, and others formed part of the team that performed the first open heart surgery in Nigeria in 1974.[20]
Yacoub began the transplant programme at Harefield Hospital in 1980 with a heart transplant for Derrick Morris, who became Europe's longest surviving heart transplant recipient until his death in July 2005.[22] Two years later, he performed a heart transplant on John McCafferty, who survived for more than 33 years, until 10 February 2016 and became recognised as the world's longest surviving heart transplant patient by the Guinness World Records in 2013,[22] surpassing the previous Guinness World Record of 30 years, 11 months and 10 days set by an American man who died in 2009.[23]
From 1986 to 2006, he held the position of British Heart Foundation Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College Faculty of Medicine.[18][25] In 1988, he became a member of the Royal Colleges of Physicians, twenty years after qualifying in surgery.[26]
He retired from the National Health Service in 2001 at the age of 65.[2][5]
In 2006 he led a complex operation which required removing a transplant heart from a person whose own heart had recovered. The original heart had not been removed during transplant surgery nearly a decade earlier, in the hope it might recover.[2][34]
In April 2007, it was reported that a British medical research team led by Yacoub had grown part of a human heart valve from stem cells.[35]
Charitiesedit
In 1995, Yacoub founded the charity Of Ahmed Sherif "Chain of Hope",[36][37] through which he continued to operate on children,[38] and through which the provision of heart surgery for correctable heart defects are made possible in areas without specialist cardiac surgery units.[39]
He is also the head of the Magdi Yacoub Global Heart Foundation, co-founded with Ahmed Zewail and Ambassador Mohamed Shaker in 2008,[40][41][42] which launched the Aswan Heart project and founded the Aswan Heart Centre the following year.[43]
He is married to Marianne and they have three children[33] and a number of grandchildren.[38]
Yacoub enjoys swimming, listening to classical music and growing orchids.[6][60]
Selected publicationsedit
Booksedit
Annual of Cardiac Surgery. Current Science (1994). ISBN 9781859221433. J. Pepper (Ed)
Cardiac Valve Allografts : Science and Practice. Steinkopff-Verlag Heidelberg (1997). ISBN 9783642592508. With A. C. Yankah and R. Hetzer
Articlesedit
"Vagotomy through mediastinoscopy for pulmonary osteoarthropathy. British Journal of Diseases of the Chest. Vol. 60, Issue 3 (July 1966), p. 144-147. PMID 5967955, doi:10.1016/S0007-0971(66)80032-3.
"Homograft replacement of the aortic valve. A critical review". Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases. Vol. 11, Issue 4 (January 1969), pp. 275–293. PMID 4884690, doi:10.1016/0033-0620(69)90054-1. With Donald Ross
"Two-stage operation for anatomical correction of transposition of the great arteries with intact interventricular septum". The Lancet. Vol. 1, Issue 8025 (June 1977), pp. 1275–8. PMID 68381, doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(77)91317-4. Co-authored with R. Radley-Smith and R. Maclaurin.
"Two Hearts that Beat as One". Circulation. Vol. 92, Issue 2 (15 July 1995), pp. 156–157. doi:10.1161/01.CIR.92.2.156.
"An evaluation of the Ross operation in adults". Journal of Heart Valve Disease. Vol. 15, No. 4 (July 2006), pp. 531–9. PMID 16901050. Yacoub et al.
"Is there a risk in avoiding risk for younger patients with aortic valve disease?". British Medical Journal. Vol. 342, 26 May 2011. doi:10.1136/bmj.d2466. Co-authored with Tom Treasure and Asif Hasan
"The Ross operation in infants and children, when and how?". Heart. Vol. 100, Issue 24 (16 October 2014), pp. 1905–1906. doi:10.1136/heartjnl-2014-306453. Co-authored with Ismail El-Hamamsy
^ abc"BAU - Beirut Arab University | Honorary Doctorates". www.bau.edu.lb. Beirut Arab University. 2019. Retrieved 13 November 2019.
^Bibi-Aisha, Wadvalla (28 April 2011). "Religious bias in Egypt's universities". Nature Middle East. doi:10.1038/nmiddleeast.2011.51.
^ abcdefYacoub, M. H. (15 January 2004). "Professor Sir Magdi Habib Yacoub, FRS, FRCS, FRCP, DS: a conversation with the editor *". American Journal of Cardiology. 93 (2): 176–192. doi:10.1016/j.amjcard.2003.10.003. ISSN 0002-9149. PMID 14715343.
^ abcPresentation speech for Sir Magdi Yacoub for the honorary degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University honoris causa. University of Buckingham. Graduation 2015. Prfessor Mike `Cawthorne.
^ abcdefgBaines, Emma (28 March 2006). "Circulation: European Perspectives". Circulation. 113 (12): f45–f48. doi:10.1161/circ.113.12.f45.
^Bonn, D. (2000). "Magdi Yacoub: A surgeon and a scientist". The Lancet. 355 (9202): 474–475. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(00)82027-9. PMID 10841138. S2CID 7108760.
^Nainggolan, Lisa (27 March 2003). "Yacoub: Surgeon and scientist". Medscape. Retrieved 3 December 2019.
^ abcdTansey, EM; Reynolds, LA (September 1999). "Early Heart Transplant Surgery in the UK" (PDF). Wellcome Witnesses to Twentieth Century Medicine: 28 – via Queen Mary, University of London.
^ abEmanuel, R. (18 May 1968). "Too ill for cardiac surgery?". British Medical Journal. 2 (5602): 400–402. doi:10.1136/bmj.2.5602.400. ISSN 0007-1447. PMC1985988. PMID 5649000.
^Allar, Daniel (28 August 2018). "Ross procedure boosts survival for younger valve replacement candidates". Cardiovascular Business. Retrieved 29 November 2019.
^Yacoub, Magdi; El-Hamamsy, Ismail (15 December 2014). "The Ross operation in infants and children, when and how?". Heart. 100 (24): 1905–1906. doi:10.1136/heartjnl-2014-306453. ISSN 1355-6037. PMC4251164. PMID 25324536.
^ abTorres, Enrique Garcia (11 July 2012). "Ross Procedure With Pulmonary Autograft Reinforcement". CTSNet.
^Mark Ruzmetov, Karl F. Welke, Dale M. Geiss, Klay Buckley and Randall S. Fortuna (2014). “Failed Autograft After the Ross Procedure in Children: Management and Outcome”. The Annals of Thoracic Surgery. The Society of Thoracic Surgeons. Elsevier. doi:10.1016/j.athoracsur.2014.02.038
^Luciani, Giovanni Battista; Viscardi, Francesca; Pilati, Mara; Prioli, Antonia Maria; Faggian, Giuseppe; Mazzucco, Alessandro (March 2010). "The Ross-Yacoub procedure for aneurysmal autograft roots: a strategy to preserve autologous pulmonary valves". The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery. 139 (3): 536–542. doi:10.1016/j.jtcvs.2009.08.019. ISSN 1097-685X. PMID 19846123.
^Yuh, David Daiho; Vricella, Luca A.; Baumgartner, William (2012). Johns Hopkins Manual of Cardiothoracic Surgery. McGraw Hill Professional. ISBN 978-0-07-181158-3.
^Acton, Q. Ashton (2012). "1. Aortic Valve". Heart Valves—Advances in Research and Application: 2012 Edition. ScholarlyEditions. p. 107. ISBN 978-1-4649-9868-3.
^ abcdAlivizatos, Peter A. (24 January 2019). "Sir Magdi H. Yacoub, the Leonardo da Vinci of cardiac surgery". Proceedings (Baylor University. Medical Center). 32 (1): 146–151. doi:10.1080/08998280.2018.1532247. ISSN 0899-8280. PMC6442908. PMID 30956614.
^"Hospitals in England and Wales: Buildings, equipment and staff. Photographs, 194-".
^John C. Eze, Ndubueze Ezemba, Open-Heart Surgery in Nigeria Indications and Challenges, Tex. Heart Inst. J. 2007; 34(1): 8–10.
^Sarris, George E.; Balmer, Christian; Bonou, Pipina; Comas, Juan V.; da Cruz, Eduardo; Chiara, Luca Di; Di Donato, Roberto M.; Fragata, José; Jokinen, Tuula Eero; Kirvassilis, George; Lytrivi, Irene (1 January 2017). "Clinical guidelines for the management of patients with transposition of the great arteries with intact ventricular septum". European Journal of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery. 51 (1): e1–e32. doi:10.1093/ejcts/ezw360. ISSN 1010-7940. PMID 28077506.
^ ab"The Telegraph - John McCafferty Longest Living Heart Transplantation Survival", www.telegraph.co.uk, retrieved 9 February 2017
^Prynne, Miranda (24 December 2013). "Brit sets new record for longest surviving heart transplant patient". The Daily Telegraph. United Kingdom. Archived from the original on 24 December 2013. Retrieved 19 September 2014.
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^Burke, K. (2002). "Overseas talent can help us build a better NHS, says Magdi Yacoub". British Medical Journal (Clinical Research Ed.). 324 (7337): 565c–565. doi:10.1136/bmj.324.7337.565/c. PMC1122503. PMID 11884312.
^Rosenthal, N. (2009). "Taking translational research to heart: An interview with Sir Magdi Yacoub". Disease Models & Mechanisms. 2 (9–10): 433–435. doi:10.1242/dmm.004176. PMID 19726801.
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