Francis Fontan

Francis Fontan (2 July 1929 – 14 January 2018) was a French cardiologist and cardiothoracic surgeon best known for developing the Fontan procedure, a surgical procedure used to treat some forms of congenital heart disease.

Early life and education Fontan was born on 2 July 1929 in Nay, a small town in the French Pyrenees. Fontan's father was a cyclist who was leading the 1929 Tour de France before his bicycle was damaged in an accident, forcing him to withdraw from the race.

At age 17, Fontan entered the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Bordeaux before specializing in surgery, and later, paediatric cardiac surgery.

With a growing interest in the management of patients with congenital heart disease, Fontan was engaged in research between 1964 and 1966. In the hope of treating patients in whom the flow of blood through the right side of the heart was impaired, Fontan endeavoured to create a shunt between the vena cava and the pulmonary artery. His initial attempts in dogs were unsuccessful and all the animals died within a few hours.

Despite these failures, Fontan felt like the surgery (which later became known as the Fontan procedure) would work in humans, and when his colleague Pierre Broustet asked his opinion about managing a young woman with tricuspid atresia in 1968, Fontan decided to perform the surgery. The patient experienced some complications after surgery, but she survived and recovered from it. The operation was completed on a second patient in 1970, and after a third case the series was published in the international journal Thorax in 1971. The technique rapidly grew in popularity, and after several refinements is now used internationally.

In addition to his eponymous operation, Fontan is known for having been one of the pioneers of heart transplantation in France.

In 2006, he received the "Grand Prix scientifique" of the Lefoulon-Delalande Foundation.

Fontan died on 14 January 2018.