Inventor of Artificial Kidney dies at 97
Pennsylvania, February 15: The inventor of kidney dialysis machine and the chief designer of the first mechanical heart implanted in a human being, breathed his last on February 11 at a Philadelphia care center.
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97-year-old Dutch-born doctor
Willem J. Kolff, the pioneer in the field of artificial organs and
kidney dialysis, died following congestive heart failure in Newtown
Square, Pennsylvania.
“Dr. Kolff was a pioneer in the truest sense of the word. His
groundbreaking work on the artificial kidney in the 1940s made him a
household name and a hero to millions of people around the world who
benefited from this life-saving technology,” stated Michael K. Young,
President of the University of Utah.
Dr. Kolff invented the first artificial kidney during World War II
using sausage casings made of cellophane, and orange juice cans. He
saved innumerable human lives by virtue of his exemplary inventions.
Born in the Netherlands
on Valentine’s Day in 1911, Kolff pursued his studies in medicine at
the University of Leiden in 1930. He became an assistant at the
University of Groningen after graduating in 1938. It was here that he
found an interest in developing artificial kidney for those suffering
from kidney failure.
Kolff made up his mind to find a treatment for kidney failure after
he witnessed the death of a 22-year-old man from kidney failure. Kolff
felt miserable when he had to break the news
to the patient’s mother who was dressed “in a black dress and a little white cap like the farm women have.
“My first patient at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands
was a 22-year-old boy who died from renal kidney failure,” he told Ohio
Today Online in 2003. “I realized if I could remove 22 cc’s of urea
from him each day, then I could save his life.”
His research traced a paper published by a Johns Hopkins University
pharmacologist in 1913, which explained the procedure for blood
dialysis of dogs and rabbits.
Although, the first 16 patients he treated died, yet he persisted
and went on get a breakthrough in August 1945 when he was successful in
saving a 65-year-old woman, Maria Schafstad, who was in coma due to
renal failure. She lived for six more years before dying of causes
unrelated to her kidney problems.
Known as “the father of the artificial organ,” he was as a mentor to Robert Jarvik and other pioneers.
In 2002, Dr. Kolff received the Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research , one of the highest honors in American medicine, for his work on kidney dialysis.
The fact that the man who worked hard for decades to develop the
artificial device and finally made medical history by placing the
world’s first artificial heart into the chest of Seattle dentist
Barney Clark, failed to win the Nobel Prize, is a question which will continue to strike many minds.
DeVries, a noted surgeon at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, said,
“It’s always been a mystery to me. He was certainly deserving.” DeVries
was roped by Kolff into his team of doctors at the University of Utah
and their work made headlines in 1982 when they placed the device in
the chest of Barney Clark.
