Evarts GrahamBorn 19 Mar 1883; died 4 Mar 1957 at age 73.American surgeon who performed the first operation to remove a lung, on 5 Apr 1933 At Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri, he operated on a fellow physician with lung cancer. Until then, removal of a lobe of a lung was occasionally done to treat lung cancer, if the tumour was limited to one lobe. When exploration revealed this patient's cancer involved more than one lobe, he removed the entire lung. Seven ribs were removed to permit the soft tissues of the chest wall to fill the resulting cavity. The patient recovered and was cured of the disease. This was a triumph for the era that electrified the surgical world. Graham devoted many years to the study of lung cancer and its link to cigarette smoking.*. |
