Our compatriot, Vladimir Petrovich Demikhov, was one of the scientists who paved the way for humanity to transplant (a branch of medicine that studies the transplantation of internal organs and the prospects for creating artificial organs). This experimental scientist was the first in the world to carry out many operations (in an experiment). For example, he was the first to create an artificial heart in 1937 and performed the world's first heterotopic heart transplant into the chest cavity of a dog in 1946.
The future famous scientist was born on June 18, 1916 on a small farm Kuliki (today Kulikovsky farm on the territory of the modern Volgograd region) in an ordinary family of Russian peasants. Demikhov's father died during the Civil War, and his mother alone raised and raised three children, each of whom later received a higher education.
Initially, Vladimir Demikhov studied at FZU as a mechanic-repairman. But in 1934 he entered the Physiological Department of the Faculty of Biology at Moscow State University, starting his scientific career early enough. In 1937, being a third-year student, Demikhov designed and made with his own hands the world's first artificial heart, which was implanted in a dog. The dog lived with an artificial heart for two hours.
In 1940, student Demikhov graduated with honors from Moscow State University and wrote his first scientific work. But a year later, the Great Patriotic War began, which distracted him from his scientific activities, the young scientist went to the front. From 1941 to 1945 he served in the active army. Since he had a biological, not a medical education, he went to the war not as a doctor, but as a pathologist. He graduated from military service in Manchuria with the rank of senior lieutenant in the administrative service. In 1944 he was awarded the medal "For Military Merit", at that time he was a senior laboratory assistant in the pathological laboratory. The work of pathologists was also important, as it could point out mistakes made by the surgeon and avoid their repetition in the future, or point out mistakes in the treatment of wounded soldiers.
Immediately after the end of the war, Demikhov came to work at the Institute of Experimental and Clinical Surgery, where, despite the material and technical difficulties of the post-war years, he began to carry out truly unique operations. In 1946, he was the first in the world to perform a heterotopic chest transplant in a dog and the first in the world to perform a heart-lung transplant in a dog. All this proved the possibility of carrying out similar operations on humans in the future. The following year, he performed the world's first isolated lung transplant. Of the 94 dogs with transplanted hearts and lungs, seven survived from two to eight days. At the 1st All-Union Conference on Thoracic Surgery, held in 1947, the scientist talked about the methods of organ transplantation and showed a film in which the technique of heart transplantation was demonstrated. Vladimir Demikhov's report at this conference was highly appreciated by the chairman, a well-known surgeon A. N. Bakulev at that time, who assessed Demikhov's experiments as "a great achievement of Soviet surgery and medicine."
And in 1950 Demikhov became a laureate of the N. N. Burdenko Prize, which was awarded by the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR. The first post-war years were the time when the scientist's work received recognition in the USSR, prominent medical specialists paid attention to them. Vladimir Petrovich continued his medical experiments, devoting himself to work completely. He worked on three types of operations: transplantation of a second heart with its parallel inclusion in the circulatory system; transplant of a second heart with one lung; transplant of a second heart with gastro-atrial anastomosis. In addition, he finally developed methods of complete simultaneous replacement of the heart and lungs combined.
In 1951, at a session of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences, which was held in Ryazan, Demikhov transplanted donor hearts and lungs to the dog Damka, which lived for 7 days. This was the first time in world medicine when a dog with a strange heart lived for so long. She reportedly walked in the lobby of the same building where the session was held and felt pretty good. She died not from the consequences of a heart transplant, but from damage to the larynx, which was unintentionally inflicted on her during the operation. In the same year, Vladimir Petrovich presented a fairly perfect heart prosthesis, which worked from a pneumatic drive and carried out the world's first replacement of the heart with a donor one without using a heart-lung machine.
In 1952-53 Vladimir Petrovich developed the method of mammary-coronary bypass grafting. During his experiments, he tried to sew the internal thoracic artery into the coronary artery below the site of its lesion. The first time he performed a similar operation on a dog in 1952, it ended in failure. Only a year later, he managed to cope with the main obstacle that arose when the shunt was applied, the lack of time. The work had to be done when the heart was stopped, so the time for bypass surgery was extremely limited - no more than two minutes. To connect the arteries during mammary-coronary bypass surgery, Demikhov used tantalum staples and plastic cannulas. The results of the experiments were summed up later. Of the 15 operated dogs that underwent surgery, three lived for more than two years, one for more than three years. This indicated the advisability of such an intervention. In the future, this method will begin to be widely used in clinical practice all over the planet.
In 1954, Vladimir Demikhov developed a method for transplanting a head together with forelimbs from a puppy onto the neck of an adult dog. He managed to put this operation into practice. Both heads were breathing, at the same time lapping milk from a bowl, playing. These unique moments have made it onto film. In just 15 years, Demikhov created twenty two-headed dogs, however, none of them lived long, the animals died due to tissue rejection, the record was one month. A color documentary film "On the Transplant of a Dog's Head in an Experiment" was shown in 1956 at the International Exhibition of the USSR in the USA. This film contributed to the fact that Demikhov was talked about all over the world. The aim of these experiments was to learn how to transplant internal organs with the least damage. After suturing all the vessels, a general blood circulation was created, the transplanted head began to live.
These experimental operations forced the world community to talk about Demikhov as one of the greatest surgeons of our time, but at home he was literally anathematized. Officials from Soviet medicine did not want to hear that the purpose of the unusual experiments was to test in practice the possibility of saving a sick person by temporarily “connecting” him to the circulatory system of a healthy person. The scientist's opponents became more and more aggressive, it got to the point that one of his experimental dogs was simply killed.
Academician V. V. Kovanov, who was the director of the 1st Sechenov Medical Institute, where Vladimir Petrovich worked for some time, called the latter a "pseudo-scholar and charlatan." NN Blokhin, who was the president of the Academy of Medical Sciences, believed that "this man is just an" interesting experimenter. " Many believed that the very idea of a human heart transplant, which the scientist ardently defended and defended in every possible way, was immoral. In addition, the great surgeon did not have a medical education, which gave many an extra reason to reproach him for the frivolity of the research being carried out.
At the same time, prominent doctors from Czechoslovakia, the GDR, Great Britain and even the United States came to the Soviet Union only to personally attend the operations conducted by the Master. He was sent numerous invitations to symposia that took place in the USA and Europe, but Demikhov was released abroad only once. In 1958, he went to a symposium on transplantation, which was held in Munich, his speech then made a real sensation. But officials from the USSR Ministry of Health considered that he was disclosing Soviet secret medical research, so they were not allowed to go abroad anymore. The situation resembled a bad joke, while the current Minister of Health called Demikhov's experiments in transplantation unscientific, harmful and charlatan, the same Ministry of Health officials accused him of divulging state secrets during a speech in Munich.
Demikhov worked at the 1st Moscow Medical Institute named after I. M. Sechenov from 1955 to 1960, after which, due to the aggravation of relations with the director of the institute, Vladimir Kovanov, who did not admit his dissertation entitled Transplantation of vital organs in experiment”, Was forced to go to work at the Sklifosovsky Institute of Emergency Medicine. This dissertation was published in an abridged version of the monograph of the same name. At that time, it was the only guide to organ and tissue transplantation in the world. The work was quickly translated into several foreign languages and presented in Berlin, New York and Madrid, arousing genuine interest, and Demikhov himself became a recognized authority in this field in international circles, but not in the USSR. Only in 1963, with scandals that undermined his health, did he manage to defend himself. In one day, he managed to defend two dissertations (candidate and doctoral), going from candidate to doctor of biological sciences in just 1.5 hours.
At the Sklifosovsky Institute for Emergency Medicine, a “laboratory for transplantation of vital organs” was opened for the Master. But in reality it was a pitiful sight - a 15 square meter room located in the basement of the wing. Dampness, cold and poor lighting included. According to the recollections of Demikhov's students, they literally walked on the boards, under which dirty water was squelching. The operations were carried out under the illumination of an ordinary light bulb. There was no equipment either, instead of a compressor there was an old vacuum cleaner, a homemade artificial respirator and an old cardiograph that was often breaking down. There were no rooms for keeping the operated animals, so the scientist took the dogs participating in the experiments to his home, where he nursed them after the operations. Later, 1, 5 rooms were allocated for the laboratory, which were located on the first floor of the wing. Under such conditions, the laboratory under the leadership of Vladimir Petrovich worked until 1986. It developed various techniques for transplanting limbs, head, liver, adrenal glands with a kidney, the results of the experiments were published in scientific journals.
Twice in 1960 and 1963, the South African surgeon Christian Barnard came to Vladimir Demikhov for an internship, who in 1967 performed the world's first human-to-human heart transplant, forever inscribing his name in history. Barnard himself until the end of his life considered Demikhov his teacher, without communication with him, studying his works and personal meetings, he would never have dared to undertake his historical experiment. But in the Soviet Union, the first successful heart transplant operation was carried out only on March 12, 1987, the operation was performed by the honored surgeon, academician Valery Shumakov.
Demikhov's work, the results he achieved and the scientific works written have brought him real international recognition. He was an honorary member of the Royal Scientific Society in Uppsala (Sweden), an honorary doctor of medicine at the University of Leipzig, as well as the University of Hanover, the American Mayo Clinic. Vladimir Demikhov has received numerous honorary diplomas from scientific organizations representing various countries of the world. In 2003, he was posthumously awarded the International Golden Hippocrates Prize.
Despite the foreign recognition, the last years of Vladimir Demikhov's life in Russia were spent practically in oblivion in a small one-room apartment in Moscow. Her furnishings were only old furniture. Even the district doctor, who visited the ailing Demikhov, was amazed at the poverty and Spartan conditions of the apartment of the doctor of biological sciences and a famous scientist. In recent years, Demikhov practically did not leave the house, since even earlier he began to lose his memory. Once he went for a walk with his dog in the morning, and returned only late in the evening. Strangers brought him home, they found his apartment, since his daughter Olga had put a note with the address of residence in his jacket pocket the day before. After this incident, his relatives simply did not let him out on the street anymore.
It's a shame that the recognition of Demikhov's works at home took place later than abroad. Only in 1988, among other well-known Soviet specialists, Vladimir Petrovich was awarded the USSR State Prize "for achievements in the field of cardiac surgery." And in 1998, already in the year of his death, Demikhov was awarded the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, III Degree, among other scientists, he became a laureate of the State Prize of the Russian Federation "for the development of the problem of heart transplantation."
The great Russian experimental scientist, wonderful surgeon Vladimir Demikhov passed away on November 22, 1998 at the age of 82. There is a monument on his grave at the Vagankovskoye cemetery in Moscow, which indicates "the founder of transplantation of vital organs." In 2016, in the year of the centenary of his birth, a full-fledged monument was finally opened to him. It was installed near the new building of the Shumakov Research Institute of Transplantology and Artificial Organs. In the same year, the VIII All-Russian Congress of Transplantologists with international participation took place, which was dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Master. At the same time, at the initiative of the Russian Transplant Society, 2016 was declared the year of Vladimir Demikhov. Truly, Russia is a country in which one must live for a long time, and sometimes recognition comes only after death.
