Leading trauma surgeon dies

[Guest guest]

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673608601257/

fulltext

Leading trauma surgeon. Born on Nov 22, 1925, in Waco, TX, USA, he

died of gastrointestinal cancer on Oct 18, 2007, in , NV,

USA, aged 81 years.

In 1985, then-American College of Surgeons President Claude Organ

analysed the top surgical leadership in the USA for his presidential

address (Am J Surg 1985; 150: 838–49). He assigned points for various

accomplishments, such as being on a National Institutes of Health

(NIH) study section or president of a major society. On the basis of

his study of 460 surgeons, G Tom Shires, then chair of surgery at

Cornell University in New York, was the number one academic surgeon

in the country.

Philip Barie, now professor of surgery and chief of the division of

critical care and trauma at Cornell, was in the first group of

residents that Shires recruited after he became chair of surgery

there in 1975. At Cornell, Shires was the impetus behind the creation

of a now internationally recognised burns centre that admits 1000

patients per year, a trauma centre, and a true academic surgical

faculty, Barie said. Shires was “a visionary leader, one who believed

very much in recruiting good people and putting trust in them, which

was always reciprocatedâ€, Barie said.

Shires' research on the physiology and therapy of shock “certainly

changed the practice of medicineâ€, Barie said. In the 1960s, Shires

recognised that despite prevailing practice, surgical and trauma

patients did not need sodium and fluid restriction, but needed to

receive it. “That work was responsible for the now universal practice

of giving those patients salineâ€, Barie said. Shires also co-authored

several books, including the leading textbook Principles of Surgery.

Shires earned his medical degree from the University of Texas

Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, TX, in 1948, then completed

his residency at Dallas's Parkland Memorial Hospital. He stayed at

Southwestern and Parkland, becoming chair of surgery in 1961. When

President F Kennedy was shot in 1963, Shires successfully

operated on Texas Governor Connally for wounds he suffered

during the assassination. 2 days later, he operated on Lee Harvey

Oswald, unsuccessfully, after Oswald was brought to the same

emergency room in an ambulance without paramedics or saline.

“Determined not to repeat the Oswald experience, he went to work with

the Dallas Fire Department to create one of the nation's first mobile

emergency medicine paramedic systemsâ€, physician Cory lin wrote

in the Chicago Tribune.

In 1974, Shires became chair of surgery at the University of

Washington in Seattle, and left for Cornell in 1975. He would remain

there until 1991, serving as dean from 1987 to 1991. He chaired Texas

Tech University's surgery department, in Lubbock, from 1991 to 1995,

and his last post was as director of the Trauma Institute of the

University of Nevada School of Medicine in Las Vegas, which he held

until his death. Shires was continuously funded by the NIH for about

40 years, and was one of the first researchers to receive an NIH

MERIT (Method to Extend Research in Time) grant.

Shires “had an encyclopedic knowledge that only got worse, from our

perspective, when he began to edit a journalâ€, Barie said. Shires was

editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons

from 1982 to 1992. “He knew everything as it was, but when he started

quoting to us papers he'd just accepted, we knew we cooked. His

morbidity and mortality conferences were Thursdays at 3 p.m. They

were legendary. There was nothing in surgery that the man did not

know.â€

The surgeons Shires trained were fiercely loyal to him. He maintained

an alumni association called Chirurgio that had grown to more than

200 people in recent years. “This man was as close to a father to us

as a non-blood relative could beâ€, Barie said. From the 15 years he

was at Cornell, 40 surgeons who were either his residents or junior

faculty at the time went on to become chairs of departments or

academic service chiefs. In his own presidential address to the

American Surgical Association, in 1980, he bemoaned “the loss of

bright, talented, gifted, energetic students to the discipline of

surgeryâ€. It is up to surgeons, he said “to recreate the enthusiasm,

the environment for productivity which is fun and satisfying above

all. We must focus on the progress and the potential in surgery.â€

Shires is survived by his wife, Robbie Jo Shires; a son,

Shires III; and two daughters, Donna Jacquelyn Blain and Jo

Ellen.

Louis N. Molino, Sr., CET

FF/NREMT-B/FSI/EMSI

Owner and President of LNM Emergency Services Consulting Services (LNMECS)

Freelance Consultant/Trainer/Author/Journalist/Fire Protection Consultant

LNMolino@...

(Cell Phone)

(IFW/TFW/FSS Office)

(IFW/TFW/FSS Fax)

The comments contained in this E-mail are the opinions of the author and the

author alone. I in no way ever intend to speak for any person or

organization that I am in any way whatsoever involved or associated with unless

I

specifically state that I am doing so. Further this E-mail is intended only for

its

stated recipient and may contain private and or confidential materials

retransmission is strictly prohibited unless placed in the public domain by the

original author.

**************Start the year off right. Easy ways to stay in shape.

http://body.aol.com/fitness/winter-exercise?NCID=aolcmp00300000002489