A pioneer in the field of coronary artery bypass grafting has become a renowned scholar, an outstanding Soviet surgeon Vasily Kolesov.
February 25, 1964 in the clinic of Pavlov Medical Institute Vasily Kolesov performed the world's first coronary bypass surgery for 44 -year-old patient with severe stenocardia. This successful operation was preceded by several experiments on dogs during which the surgeon managed to win a hard time limit using his own suture machine. Using this technological advantage in 1968 Vasily Kolesov performed the first surgery to restore blood flow in the arteries on open heart. Mammary coronary bypass is now worldwide known as “Kolesov’s operation”.
Development of coronary artery bypass is one of the greatest achievements of the twentieth century surgery. Since the beginning of clinical use in the 60s, this operation is performed to millions of patients. In the period from 25 February 1964 to May 9, 1967 the Surgical department headed by Vasily Ivanovich Kolesov remained the only place in the world where he successfully performed coronary bypass surgery.
Most widely in Russia operations on heart vessels began in the mid and late 1990s when our country opened to modern technology and expensive equipment for these surgeries. Today, such operations are organized through minimally invasive techniques.
Despite the fact that it is our surgeons were the first in this field of medicine the national science achievements applied in a very limited extent. In 2004 in St. Petersburg the number of these surgeries did not exceed 1,000 per year. For comparison in 2013 only in Almazov Federal Medical Research Centre there were about a thousand of coronary bypass surgeries.
Vasily Kolesov contribution to the global cardiac surgery is not only of historical interest now. The rapid development of robotic and video- assisted coronary surgery revived interest to work of the scientist of open heart bypass.
Today the heritage of great cardiac surgeon continues to serve for saving lives in Russia and around the world.