Welcome to an inspiring talk by Prof. Ferdinand Waldenberger about the meaning of medicine and his brave path as one of Europe’s leading cardiac surgeons.
Prof. Waldenberger was part of the team that carried out the world’s first successful heart transplantation in a newborn baby. He also performed the first bypass surgery on a beating heart in the German-speaking countries. Today he continues to work actively in Austria, to implant artificial hearts in children and adults, to teach and carry out free heart operations in Sudan and Yemen.
“I was engaged in a lifelong battle between success and fame on one hand and humility and modesty on the other hand. Sometimes I was caught in between the race of advancing medical progress and pushing it beyond boundaries and of engaging in aggressive surgical fixes to battle heart disease on the one hand and the quest for the best treatment for the individual patient and the shared decision making challenged by the physicians judgment call when and how vigorously to intervene on the other hand. There was always this battle between a burning and unbounded ambition to become a surgical star and the ingrained, deep-seated helper syndrome. Sometime I fought aside the narcissistic Dorian Gray type of cardiac surgeon, on the next day I answered the altruistic call for taking responsibility in order to provide continuing and comprehensive medical care to individuals, families, and communities.
Nowadays I am more engaged in influencing my vicinity with my values and my thoughts of a humane, patient centred medicine, which combines progress and benevolence. My goal is to become a good doctor myself and enabling my companions of being able to employ all the advancements of artificial intelligence and decision-making and the possibilities of personalized medicine.”
– Prof. Ferdinand Waldenberger.
The event will be in English with Bulgarian translation.
Presented in partnership with the Association of the Medical Students in Bulgaria - Sofia and the Embassy of Austria to Bulgaria.