Willem J. Kolff

A medical doctor who grew up in the Netherlands, one of Kolff's first patients was dying of kidney failure. Kolff set out to see if he could build an artificial kidney. He kept his focus wide, however: in 1940, he organized the first blood bank in Europe. By then, Germany was occupying the Netherlands, and Kolff was active in the resistance against the Nazis: he hid 800 people at his hospital to prevent them from being sent to labor camps. Yet he still had time to work on his artificial kidney, succeeding in 1943; in 1945 saved his first life with the machine. Since then, his kidney dialysis methods have saved millions of lives. In 1950 he moved to the United States, and worked on heart-lung machines. "If a man can grow a heart," he liked to say, "he can build one." He eventually did: helping to develop the "Jarvik" artificial heart that was implanted in Barney Clark in 1982. (Clark survived four months; when he died, the heart kept pumping.) The "membrane oxygenator" he invented, which adds oxygen to blood as it flows through an artificial heart, is still used in heart-lung machines today. Kolff worked on other artificial organs, including eyes and ears, until he retired in 1997. He died February 11, 3 days before his 98th birthday. From This is True for 8 February 2009 Suggestions for further reading: Coping with Kidney Disease: A 12-Step Treatment Program to Help You Avoid Dia... by Mackenzie Walser, Betsy Thorpe Amazon Price: $11.53 Customer Review: This book contains a lot of good practical information about kidney disease. It also contains a lot of contradicting advice, such as reducing dietary salt then proposing a dietary menu that has over 1100mg of salt in one serving. Kidney patients ar...   Cooking for David: A Culinary Dialysis Cookbook by Sara Colman, Dorothy Gordon Amazon Price: Customer Review: This cookbook is wonderful for those who must learn to eat differently due to the contraints of dialysis.   Handbook of Dialysis Amazon Price: $58.40 Customer Review: This is a must have for anyone in the renal field. The book is very complete and easy to read. It covers all the dialysis modalities and then some. I am really happy I purchased this book and I would recommend it, if your new to dialysis or have been...   Review of Hemodialysis for Nurses and Dialysis Personnel (Review of Hemodialy... by Judith Z. Kallenbach, Charles Gutch, Martha Stoner, Anna Corea Amazon Price: $48.55 Customer Review: I bought this book because I wanted to expand my knowledge. But the truth is the book is very basic, too basic for me. As a dialysis nurse the book really could provide me with new information, but still I really like this book because I use it in cl...   Dialysis without Fear: A Guide to Living Well on Dialysis for Patients and Th... by Daniel Offer, Susan Offer Szafir, Marjorie Kaiz Offer Amazon Price: $12.92 Customer Review: I wish that this book was available when I started dialysis. I recommend this book for anyone wanting to know more about dialysis and/or transplants,(patients, family. friends, etc). I gave a copy to the social worker at my dialysis clinic and ...   Newsfeed display by CaRP

About the HUs About This is True Subscribe Free to This is True Your e-mail: Find by name/keyword: Prev: Habitat founder Millard Fuller Next: Cancer researcher John Kanzius Complete Name List

Copyright 1998-2010 ThisisTrue.Inc, all rights reserved. May not be copied or archived without express, prior, written permission. "This is True" is a registered trademark of ThisisTrue.Inc, Ridgway Colorado. 11605