Biography

Professor Yves Bouvrain was born, educated and practiced in Paris, directed the Cardiology program at Lariboisiere Hospital and then remained a Parisian in retirement until his death. He trained during the 1930s especially with Prof. Etienne Bernard and the father of French cardiology, Prof. Charles Laubry who in 1937 founded the French Society of Cardiology of which Bouvrain became President in 1971. During training he described a skin lymphoma in 1938 then named Lymphome de Sezary-Bouvrain. During the same year he studied and published as his thesis and in the medical literature, oxygen consumption by the cardiac patient during activity. The war years saw him in military medical service, finally returning to Lariboisiere in 1947 as Chief Physician, after the hospital had been successively occupied by two opposing armies and stripped of virtually all medical equipment. He found the hospital poorly equipped, services and equipment impoverished, unpleasant for patients and difficult for physicians and staff to perform their work. He determined to remedy the situation and worked ceaselessly to improve every aspect of hospital function, for patients and for staff. At his retirement, he had created the finest cardiology department in Paris and is especially remembered for several additional major contributions.

When he became the head physician at Lariboisiere, the treatment of cardiac arrhythmias was poorly understood and the use of electricity in cardiac arrhythmia management was neither known nor considered. Following the description of closed chest cardiac pacing he began to duplicate that technique in arrhythmia therapy. In 1956, achieving significant success, he observed that in addition to effective stimulation that technique was extremely painful and disliked by the patient. By 1960 he began to investigate the endocardial approach to cardiac stimulation and became the first to introduce this technique into France. He continued to pursue the investigation and management of cardiac arrhythmias, especially with electrical stimulation, during the remainder of his career. During 1961 he used the first external electric shock in France to terminate, ventricular tachycardia. These advances so encouraged his interest that he and Fred Zacouto began the intensive investigation of the use of electrical resuscitation of those whose hearts had failed. The schema of a technique of cardiac monitoring, pacing and defibrillation as part of a resuscitation device, published at that time has remained cogent to the present.

In 1962 he established the first group of monitored cardiac beds, first two and then four and in 1964 recognized that prolonged delay in management was hazardous for patients with myocardial infarction. He began to press for rapid transportation and hospitalization in a monitored unit. This first cardiac intensive care unit was rapidly replicated in France and eventually throughout the world. By 1970 he had been instrumental in the creation of the French Emergency Medical System. Thereafter he maintained his continuing interest in investigation of arrhythmias, eventually practicing programmed stimulation as did Durrer in the Netherlands, and working with Coraboeuf in basic cardiac electrophysiology, for many years.

He trained over 200 of the cardiologists of France. His trainees, department and colleagues were among the most distinguished and include Robert Slama, Philippe Coumel and Jacques Mugica.

- Seymour Furman, M.D.