Professor Nikolai Petrovich Sinitsyn (1900–1972) – surgeon, physiologist, experimental transplantologist and cardiac surgeon (to the 50th anniversary of the fi rst heart transplantation to a man)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the outstanding Soviet scientist, the head of the department of pharmacology of the Gorky Medical Institute (now the Nizhny Novgorod Medical Academy), the honored worker of science, professor N.P. Sinitsyn (1900–1972). His achievements in surgery, physiology, experimental transplantology and experimental cardiac surgery have studied. It is shown that in 1937–1943. N.P. Sinitsyn was fi rst man in the world carried out successful transplantations of an additional and isolated heart to frogs in the thoracic cavity and for the fi rst time in Russia transplanted the dog’s head; in 1940–1955 (with interruptions) he conducted experiments on transplantation of the additional heart in the chest to dogs; in 1955–1956 he invented a way of visual control of cardiac activity of the biological and donor heart per se; in 1956 a model of a «two-headed» frog was created, and in 1959–1979 he conducted experiments on modeling and resection of heart aneurysms, plastic of the ventricles of the heart, stimulation of myocardial regeneration by electric current, studied regeneration of cardiac and papillary muscles. The reasons for not allowing the results of these experiments to go beyond the physiological laboratory are discussed in this article.