Alain Frédéric Carpentier M.D.

Doctor of Medicine

Doctor of Medicine is a doctoral degree for physicians. The degree is granted by medical schools...

 Ph.D.

Doctor of Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...

 (born 11 August 1933 in Toulouse

Toulouse

Toulouse is a city in the Haute-Garonne department in southwestern FranceIt lies on the banks of the River Garonne, 590 km away from Paris and half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea...

, Haute-Garonne

Haute-Garonne

Haute-Garonne is a department in the southwest of France named after the Garonne river. Its main city is Toulouse.-History:Haute-Garonne is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790. It was created from part of the former province of Languedoc.The...

) is a French surgeon whom the President of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery

American Association for Thoracic Surgery

The American Association for Thoracic Surgery is an international association of cardiothoracic surgeons. It was founded in 1917 by the earliest pioneers in the field of thoracic surgery. Headquartered in Beverly, Massachusetts, it has over 1,200 members from 35 countries...

 calls the father of modern mitral valve repair

Mitral valve repair

Mitral valve repair is a cardiac surgery procedure performed by cardiac surgeons to treat stenosis or regurgitation of the mitral valve. The mitral valve is the "inflow valve" for the left side of the heart. Blood flows from the lungs, where it picks up oxygen, through the pulmonary veins, to the...

. He is the recipient of the 2007 Lasker Prize.

Biography

A professor emeritus at Pierre and Marie Curie University

University of Paris

The University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...

, in the 1980s Dr. Carpentier published a landmark paper on mitral valve repair entitled The French Correction. A visiting professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine

Mount Sinai School of Medicine

Mount Sinai School of Medicine is an American medical school in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, currently ranked among the top 20 medical schools in the United States. It was chartered by Mount Sinai Hospital in 1963....

 in New York City, he currently heads the Department of Cardiovascular Surgery

Circulatory system

The circulatory system is an organ system that passes nutrients , gases, hormones, blood cells, etc...

 at the Hôpital Européen Georges Pompidou in Paris.

Dr. Carpentier is a member of the French Academy of Sciences

French Academy of Sciences

The French Academy of Sciences is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French scientific research...

 and sits on the Board of Directors

Board of directors

A board of directors is a body of elected or appointed members who jointly oversee the activities of a company or organization. Other names include board of governors, board of managers, board of regents, board of trustees, and board of visitors...

 of the World Heart Foundation. The recipient of numerous awards, including the 1996 Prix mondial Cino Del Duca

Prix mondial Cino Del Duca

The Prix mondial Cino Del Duca is an international literary award.-Origins and operations:It was established in 1969 in France by Simone Del Duca to continue the work of her husband, publishing magnate Cino Del Duca .Designed to recognize and reward an author whose work constitutes, in a...

, in 2005 the American Association for Thoracic Surgery (AATS) bestowed its Medallion for Scientific Achievement for only the fifth time in its history. In announcing Dr. Carpentier as the recipient, the AATS also noted that he is "one of the foremost medical philanthropist

Philanthropist

A philanthropist is someone who engages in philanthropy; that is, someone who donates his or her time, money, and/or reputation to charitable causes...

s in the world, having established a premier cardiac center in Vietnam

Vietnam

Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...

 a decade ago where over 1,000 open-heart cases are now performed annually. In addition, he has founded cardiac surgery programs in 17 French-speaking

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 countries in Africa."

In 2006, Carpentier received considerable media attention in the United States as the surgeon who performed an emergency mitral valve repair procedure on Charlie Rose

Charlie Rose

Charles Peete "Charlie" Rose, Jr. is an American television talk show host and journalist. Since 1991 he has hosted Charlie Rose, an interview show distributed nationally by PBS since 1993...

 when the PBS television interviewer fell ill while en route to Damascus

Damascus

Damascus , commonly known in Syria as Al Sham , and as the City of Jasmine , is the capital and the second largest city of Syria after Aleppo, both are part of the country's 14 governorates. In addition to being one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, Damascus is a major...

 to interview Syria

Syria

Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....

n President Bashar al-Assad

Bashar al-Assad

Bashar al-Assad is the President of Syria and Regional Secretary of the Ba'ath Party. His father Hafez al-Assad ruled Syria for 29 years until his death in 2000. Al-Assad was elected in 2000, re-elected in 2007, unopposed each time.- Early Life :...

. Writer Adam Gopnik

Adam Gopnik

Adam Gopnik, is an American writer, essayist and commentator. He is best known as a staff writer for The New Yorker—to which he has contributed non-fiction, fiction, memoir and criticism—and as the author of the essay collection Paris to the Moon, an account of five years that Gopnik, his wife...

, who authored a book about his five years living in Paris and is a personal friend of Charlie Rose, called Dr. Carpentier the most famous surgeon in France.

In 2008, Carpentier announced a fully implantable artificial heart

Artificial heart

An artificial heart is a mechanical device that replaces the heart. Artificial hearts are typically used in order to bridge the time to heart transplantation, or to permanently replace the heart in case transplantation is impossible...

 will be ready for clinical trial by 2011, and for alternative to transplant in 2013. It was developed and will be manufactured by him, Biomedical firm Carmat, and venture capital firm Truffle. The prototype uses electronic sensors and is made from chemically treated animal tissues, called "biomaterials," or a "pseudo-skin" of biosynthetic, microporous materials, amid another US team's prototype called 2005 MagScrew Total Artificial Heart, and Japan and South Korea researchers are racing to produce similar projects.

Publications

Carpentier is the author (with David H. Adams

David H. Adams

David H. Adams is an American cardiac surgeon and the Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Professor and Chairman of the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Mount Sinai Medical Center....

) of the upcoming Carpentier's Valve Reconstruction.

Other publications include:
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