Orestes Fiandra (August 4, 1921 in

Montevideo Montevideo (, ; ) is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Uruguay, largest city of Uruguay. According to the 2023 census, the city proper has a population of 1,302,954 (about 37.2% of the country's total population) in an area of . M ...

Uruguay Uruguay, officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast, while bordering the Río de la Plata to the south and the A ...

– April 22, 2011 in Montevideo, Uruguay), was a professor and researcher in medicine and

cardiology Cardiology () is the study of the heart. Cardiology is a branch of medicine that deals with disorders of the heart and the cardiovascular system. The field includes medical diagnosis and treatment of congenital heart defects, coronary artery di ...

in Uruguay. In 1960 he implanted a

pacemaker A pacemaker, also known as an artificial cardiac pacemaker, is an implanted medical device that generates electrical pulses delivered by electrodes to one or more of the chambers of the heart. Each pulse causes the targeted chamber(s) to co ...

provided by Rune Elmqvist from the

Karolinska Institute The Karolinska Institute (KI; ; sometimes known as the (Royal) Caroline Institute in English) is a research-led medical university in Solna within the Stockholm urban area of Sweden and one of the foremost medical research institutes globally ...

of Sweden. This was the first successful pacemaker implant in America. In 1969, he founded the company "Centro de Construcción de Cardioestimuladores" (CCC), which was recently acquired by Greatbatch.

Biography

Dr. Fiandra graduated as doctor in cardiology from the Facultad de Medicina (Universidad de la República) of the Uruguayan

Universidad de la República The University of the Republic (, sometimes ''UdelaR'') is a public research university in Montevideo, Uruguay. It is the country's oldest and largest university, as well as one of the largest public universities in South America in terms of en ...

. During 1954 and 1955, he stayed in Sweden to work as an intern in the Karolinska Institute. During this stay in Stockholm he met Rune Elmqvist, who worked with external pacemakers to treat atrial-ventricular blocks. Fiandra suggested Elmqvist using

germanium Germanium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Ge and atomic number 32. It is lustrous, hard-brittle, grayish-white and similar in appearance to silicon. It is a metalloid or a nonmetal in the carbon group that is chemically ...

transistor technology and e epoxy resin to develop an implantable pacemaker, allowing patients a greater mobility, but at that time Elmqvist had doubts about the safety of such a device. On February 3, 1960, together with surgeon Roberto Rubio, he successfully implanted a pacemaker built by the

Rune Elmqvist Rune Elmqvist (1 December 1906 – 15 December 1996) was a Swedish physician turned engineer who developed the first implantable pacemaker in 1958, working under the direction of Åke Senning, senior physician and cardiac surgeon at the Karolinsk ...

team. The implant was conducted on a young patient who suffered from atrial-ventricular blocks, and persistent cardiac strokes. The procedure, which was carried on in the CASMU 1 hospital in Montevideo, was the first of its kind in America. Fiandra was one of the founders of the Instituto Nacional de Cirugía Cardíaca (1965) which now takes his name. In 1969 he founded the company "Centro de Construcción de Cardioestimuladores", which manufactured pacemakers until the year 2010. He worked as a professor in cardiology in the Facultad de Medicina of the Uruguayan Universidad de la República, and as the director of the cardiology department of the Clínicas hospital in Montevideo. He was an academic in the Academia Nacional de Medicina (Uruguay), member of the

New York Academy of Sciences The New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS), originally founded as the Lyceum of Natural History in January 1817, is a nonprofit professional society based in New York City, with more than 20,000 members from 100 countries. It is the fourth-oldes ...

(EUA), president of the Instituto Nacional de Cirugía Cardíaca (Uruguay) and president of the Comisión Honoraria para la Salud Cardiovascular (Uruguay). He has published over 180 scientific papers and 5 medicine books. He has registered three patents: "Electrodo de autofijación”, "Electrodo para estimulación eléctrica de tejidos vivos" and “Corazón artificial implantable".

Some of Fiandra's work

• “Marcapasos cardíacos”, Fiandra O. Ed. Estudios Gráficos de CBA srl. Montevideo, 1971. • “Electrocardiografía”, Fiandra O. Ed. Oficina del Libro - AEM. Montevideo, 1972. • “Marcapasos Cardíacos”, Fiandra O., Espasandín W., Fiandra H.A., Erramún B., Fiandra D.O., Fernández Barbieri F., Fernández Banizi P., Greatbatch W., Barreraas F., Feldman S., Yahini J., Neufeld H., Suárez Antola R. Ed. Departamento de Cardiología del Hospital de Clínicas e Instituto Nacional de Cirugía Cardíaca. Montevideo, 1975. • “El electrocardiograma en la cardiopatía isquémica aguda” Fiandra, O., Espasandín, W., Fiandra, H.A., Mussetti, J., Finadra, D., Firstz, A., Pardiñas, C. Ed. AEM Montevideo, 2007. • “Electrocardiografía 2ed.”, imprenta AEM, editado a solicitud de los estudiantes de medicina, 2010.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fiandra, Orestes 1921 births 2011 deaths University of the Republic (Uruguay) alumni Uruguayan cardiologists Uruguayan inventors