Reconnect with Professor Magdi Yacoub
Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub – one of the world’s most celebrated heart surgeons.
Growing up in Egypt, Professor Yacoub admired the lifesaving work his father performed as a general surgeon. At a very young age he realised he wanted to become a heart surgeon and went on to pursue his dream. He trained in London and the USA, and in 1969 was appointed as a consultant surgeon at Harefield Hospital, aged 32.
Professor Yacoub hit the ground running, aiming to perform at least 10 open heart surgeries a week despite many people saying this would be unachievable. But he pushed ahead, working tirelessly with colleagues who were completely dedicated to looking after transplant patients, and continually applied new research discoveries at the bedside. He studied transplantation and immunology, exploring new drugs that prevented organ rejection, and carried out much experimental work.
In 1983 he performed Europe’s first combined heart and lung transplant, putting Harefield Hospital on the global map. The centre soon became the busiest heart transplantation unit in the world, and Harefield’s heart science centre provided the ideal backdrop to advance heart failure and mechanisms. This drove Professor Yacoub to share many innovative developments, integrating research into Harefield’s transplant service and applying new discoveries to the clinical programme as soon as possible.
Despite Professor Yacoub’s internationally renowned pioneering work, he explains: “I am an ordinary person doing my job to the utmost, I am not extraordinary. I remain humble, and humility is essential in life. Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospitals have a distinguished history in serving humanity, but have also contributed so much to the advancement of cardiology and heart surgery. They should project into the future with confidence.”
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