Marko Turina

Marko Turina (Zagreb, 1937) is Croatian cardiac surgeon. He was Director of Klinik für Herzgefasschirurgie, University Hospital of Zurich in Zurich, Switzerland. He was first person to insert an artificial heart outside the chest and first person what operated congenital heart defect on a newborn child. Marko Turina is considered as one of the best cardiac surgeons in the World.^[1]

Biography

Marko Turina was born in Zagreb. He was a great student, but because Communist Party of Yugoslavia declared him a bourgeois he had no future in SFR Yugoslavia. At first Communists sent him to Banja Luka to serve in the Army. His wish to attend Belgrade Academy for Medical Officers was denied. After that he decided to leave Yugoslavia. He was considered as political emigrant because of his anti-Communist attitudes. He went in Switzerland where he found a job at University hospital of Zürich in 1964. In 1985 he became hospital director and chef of Center for Heart and Blood Vessels Diseases. That was great success, because foreign nationals rarely got so high position. He was first person to construct and later to insert artificial heart outside the chest (1998), he is also first person what operated congenital heart defect on a newborn child, successfully. In 2000 he operated with help of robots, which was innovation in medicine. He was retired in 2004, despite his ambitions to continue his career.^[2] He is still active, he teaches about cardiac surgery around the World.

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