18 Facts About Morio Kasai

Morio Kasai was a Japanese surgeon who had a strong interest in pediatric surgery.

Morio Kasai is best known for devising a surgical procedure, the hepatoportoenterostomy, to address a life-threatening birth defect known as biliary atresia.

Morio Kasai practiced from the 1940s until 1993, spending the last few years of his career leading a hospital in Tohoku.

Morio Kasai suffered a debilitating stroke in 1999 and died in 2008.

Morio Kasai was born in Aomori Prefecture, located in the northernmost portion of the Japanese mainland.

Morio Kasai graduated from high school in Sendai and attended medical school there at Tohoku University.

Morio Kasai and a colleague, Sozo Suzuki, worked together in the 1950s to devise a surgery to treat babies born with biliary atresia, a typically fatal condition of the gastrointestinal tract.

Morio Kasai felt that surgeons had not been performing such dissection aggressively enough.

Morio Kasai found that sometimes a biliary tract appeared solid but that if he removed the entire biliary tract outside of the liver, it often contained enough ductules to promote bile flow.

An important part of Morio Kasai's procedure involved the surgical connection of the small intestine to the liver.

One day, Morio Kasai encountered significant bleeding near the portion of the liver known as the porta hepatis while trying to dissect an infant's ductules.

Morio Kasai published his work on the procedure in the Japanese journal Shujutsu in 1959, but his work was not widely known outside of Japan until he published some results in the Journal of Pediatric Surgery in 1968.

Morio Kasai attempted aggressive surgical treatment of esophageal cancer at a time when palliative treatment was standard.

Morio Kasai devised a surgery to correct Hirschsprung's disease ; he noted that it involved less surgical exploration in the pelvic area and he felt that this would reduce the loss of sensation in the rectum in comparison to the common procedure at that time.

In 1986, a 63-year-old Morio Kasai faced mandatory retirement from Tohoku University, as is common in academic centers in Japan.

Morio Kasai became the director of the NTT Tohoku Hospital for a few years, retiring from that job in 1993.

Morio Kasai, who enjoyed skiing and mountain climbing, was well into his sixties when he led a team from Tohoku University as they became the first group to climb the Nyenchen Tanglha Mountains in Tibet.

Morio Kasai suffered a stroke in 1999 and he spent several years in physical rehabilitation before he died in 2008.