Background
Raul was born in 1917, in San Luis Potosi, Mexico.
Raul was born in 1917, in San Luis Potosi, Mexico.
In 1943 he earned his Medical Degree (MD) from the Military Medical School in Mexico; He carried out his residency in general surgery at the Charity Hospital of New Orleans and specialty of Vascular Surgery at the Hospital of the University of Tulane, in the Service of Dr. Michel De Bakey.
In 1952 he entered the National Institute of Cardiology as a surgeon assigned to the Surgery Service, where he was appointed him in charge of the experimental surgery laboratory. There he began the development of different techniques to operate open-hearted, using first surface hypothermia, then crossed circulation and finally applying the principles of extracorporeal circulation with the oxygenator bubbles of De-Wall and Lillehei.
In that same year, he participated actively in the beginnings of Mexican cardiac surgery, performing the first series of mitral commissurotomy in the Military Hospital and in the Hospital de Jesus and directing the reception thesis "Mitral stenosis. Surgical treatment". Based on the experiences and good results obtained in the Laboratory of Experimental Surgery of the Cardiology Institute, on March 17, 1956, the operated the first case in Mexico of open-heart surgery in the Hospital de Jesus, using surface hypothermia. It was an 8-year-old girl, with a congenital, acyanogenic cardiopathy of the atrial septal defect type.
He was also the first surgeon in Mexico to operate, using extracorporeal circulation, an 8-year-old boy with acyanogenic congenital heart disease of the type of interventricular communication, intervention performed at the Military Hospital on January 11, 1957. From that date, the use of different oxygenators to operate open-heart in Mexico began regularly. Subsequently, he also participated in the manufacture of the first biological valves that were used in Mexico. Dr. Baz Iglesias should be considered one of the pioneers in the advances that heart surgery had in this country.
He was a member of different medical societies, such as the American College of Chest Physicians, the Mexican Society of Cardiology and the National Academy of Medicine and founding partner of the Mexican Association of Cardiovascular Surgery.