In memory of academician A.A. Vishnevsky – the chief surgeon of the Ministry of defense of the USSR (for the 45th anniversary of his death)

The life and work of academician Alexander Alexandrovich Vishnevsky are presented. During the Great Patriotic War, Alexander Alexandrovich served as an army surgeon and chief surgeon for a number of fronts. He became the director of the A.V. Vishnevsky of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences in 1948 and later served as the chief surgeon of the USSR Ministry of Defense starting in 1956. As a student and the closest associate of his father A.V. Vishnevsky, Alexander Alexandrovich participated in the creation of a domestic surgical school and then became its leader after his father’s death. Analysis of the early works of Alexander Alexandrovich reveals his devotion to the anatomical substantiation of local anesthesia based on the method of “creeping infiltrate.” The well-known monograph “Novocaine blockade and oil-balsamic antiseptics as a special type of pathogenetic therapy” (1952), written by Alexander Alexandrovich and his father, is the result of many years of research on the role of nervous trophism in the pathogenesis of a number of surgical diseases. Alexander Alexandrovich also found that in the advanced stages of medical evacuation, surgical interventions on the wounded can be performed under local anesthesia by using the creeping infiltrate method. In peacetime, A.A. Vishnevsky continued to investigate the issues related to anesthesia and nervous trophism and collaborated with his colleagues to address a number of other pressing problems, including the surgery of the heart and blood vessels, mechanisms for compensating for impaired functions of organs and systems, the use of cybernetics and electronics in surgery, burn injuries, and the use of polymers in surgery. Moreover, A.A. Vishnevsky was the first surgeon in Russia to perform a successful open-heart surgery under the conditions of artificial circulation (1957). He was awarded the highest René Leriche International Prize for his work on local anesthesia during heart surgery (1955).