What Residency Looks Like LX: Starzl's stare

Sometimes residency looks like listening to interdisciplinary rounds with the intestinal care team under the watchful gaze of Thomas Starzl (1926-2017), the famous liver transplant surgeon. He was recruited to Pittsburgh from Colorado, where he had grown tired of opposition to his pioneering but as-yet unsuccessful operations to save the lives of patients in liver failure. At Pitt he developed a highly successful transplant service, training fellows who went on to populate the field. This was back in the 1980s, when transplantation was still so new that Starzl had to fly in a rented private plane to the various hospitals where a donor had died, harvest the organ, take it back to Pittsburgh, and implant it--there just weren't other surgeons who could do this kind of surgery. According to Burden of Genius, the well-done documentary I watched on the IMAX at the Carnegie Science Center, he was a no-nonsense perfectionist and difficult to work with. But he got results. There was scandal about the way he let wealthy patients from the Middle East pay their way, but he also operated on any patient, regardless of their ability to pay. A government investigation found him innocent, but he burned out of the OR after 10 years here and turned his attention to researching immunosuppression regimens for preserving organs after transplantation. Click on the link above to see some great photographs and watch the doc-trailer.

p.s. Pittsburghers, you have two more chances to see the film at the Science Center, May 19, 4pm and 7pm!

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