24 Facts About Keith Reemtsma

Keith Reemtsma was an American transplant surgeon, best known for the cross-species kidney transplantation operation from chimpanzee to human in 1964.

Keith Reemtsma developed the intra-aortic balloon pump to bridge the time to heart transplant, and performed early research on pancreatic islet cell transplantation for diabetes mellitus.

Keith Reemtsma was born in Madera, California, on 5 December 1925, to the Presbyterian minister and missionary Henry and Pauline Reemtsma.

Keith Reemtsma had one older sister, Carol, and from 1938 was raised on a Navajo reservation in Arizona when he attended a one-room school house which taught only to eighth grade.

Keith Reemtsma attended Idaho State College as part of the United States Navy V-12 programme, where the federal government funded studies to participating colleges.

Keith Reemtsma completed his pre-medical studies and graduated in 1945.

Keith Reemtsma subsequently attended the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, graduating in 1949, and was inducted into the Phi Chi medical fraternity.

Between 5 November 1963 and 10 February 1964, whilst professor of surgery at Tulane University, Louisiana, Keith Reemtsma performed a series of chimpanzee-to-human kidney transplants.

Keith Reemtsma posited that nonhuman primate kidneys might function in human recipients and therefore be a successful treatment for renal failure, the alternative being death.

Keith Reemtsma remained on immunosuppressants azathioprine and prednisolone, and lived to return to work and survive nine months.

In 1963, James Hardy, who had carried out the first human lung allotransplant, visited Keith Reemtsma and was impressed by the outcome of the chimpanzee kidney transplantations.

Keith Reemtsma remained skeptical of the persistent opposition to innovation.

Between 1966 and 1971, Keith Reemtsma assembled the team that eventually developed the first artificial heart.

Keith Reemtsma was chairman of the Department of Surgery at the University of Utah at the time, a position appointed to him in 1966.

Keith Reemtsma recruited Willem Kolff, the surgeon who, as a young doctor in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands during the Second World War, invented the first dialysis machine using sausage casings and an automobile water pump part.

Keith Reemtsma had an overarching vision that surgery should be transformed from a predominantly destructive discipline of incision, excision, and amputation to a creative discipline of reconstruction, repair, replacement, and renewal.

In 1971, whilst at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, Reemtsma recruited surgeon Mark A Hardy, who in turn established the programme for dialysis and kidney transplantation and started the shared clinical care between renal transplant surgeons and renal physicians, at a time when the two faculties were considered separate.

At a time when heart transplants were controversial and were only being performed by Norman Shumway at Stanford University, and Richard Lower in Virginia, Keith Reemtsma was committed and succeeded in strengthening Columbia's cardiac residency training programme.

Keith Reemtsma spent many years investigating the possibility of non-human islet cell transplantation for diabetes mellitus and in turn influenced Eric Rose who in turn influenced Mark Hardy, the result being a pancreatic islet transplantation programme.

Keith Reemtsma met his first wife Ann Pierce at school and they later married while in medical school.

Keith Reemtsma frequently reiterated the story about how owing to his service in Korea, and his behavior and build, he was the model for "Hawkeye Pierce" in Richard Hooker's novel MASH.

Keith Reemtsma was president of the Society of Clinical Surgery in 1976, president of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery from 1990 to 1991, and the first vice president of the American Surgical Association in 1992.

Keith Reemtsma received the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999.

Keith Reemtsma died from liver cancer on 23 June 2000 at his home in Manhattan.