René Küss (3 May 1913 – 2006) was a French urologist and éKütransplant surgeon who made pioneering contributions in renal tract surgery and kidney transplantation with the establishment of transplant programs. At a time of unavoidable transplant rejection, he was involved in two particularly historic transplant operations. The first was a human-to-human extraperitoneal kidney transplant procedure in 1951 and later a pig-to-human kidney transplant in 1966, both of which ended in abrupt rejection. He later introduced kidney transplantation schedules involving at first irradiation, later immunosuppressants, living-related and unrelated donors and later organs from deceased donors.
Küss established several urology departments at the Paris hospitals, became General Secretary and between 1952 and 1985 took up presidency for the Société Internationale d'Urologie. In 1971, he founded the first scientific society devoted to transplantation medicine in Europe, La Société Francaise de Transplantation.
Although they worked separately, the simultaneous efforts of Küss and nephrologist Jean Hamburger are felt by transplant peers including Nobel prize winner Joseph Murray, to have "largely been forgotten", and that they have not been given "full credit for their work internationally".
Early life and education
Küss was born on 3 May 1913 into a Protestant family from Alsace and grew up with firm morals and responsibilities, being the son of a distinguished and wealthy surgeon who was at one time president of the French Academy of Surgery. Küss's grandfather was Émile Küss, a physician at the University of Strasbourg and the last mayor of Strasbourg prior to its annexation by Germany. His father headed the general surgical department at Paris's Hôpital de la Charité, later known as the Hopital Broussais. Küss recalled first attending an operating theatre with his father at the age of seven. He had two brothers and two sisters and his family spent time travelling between their homes by the seaside, on the mountains and in Paris, in pursuit of sports and arts.
He was educated at the University of Paris School of Medicine and held an appointment as a surgical resident at the Hôpital Broca, Paris, under the chief of service, Robert Proust, the brother of the author Marcel Proust.
Second World War
Küss left his early medical training at the age of 26 to enlist in the French army during the Second World War, and subsequently became physician to the French navy. He survived the attack on Mers-el-Kébir as physician-in-chief on the destroyer Mogador, which was bombed and eventually sunk off the coast of North Africa in the Scuttling of the French fleet in Toulon. On one occasion, he jumped overboard into the "oil-slick-covered sea to rescue crewmen". He received the War Cross with Palm for his war efforts. He headed General George Patton's 3rd American army's surgical team across France and into Germany and by "alternately manipulating scalpels and grenades", contributed to the efforts of the French resistance to liberate Paris. The whole time, he operated on both American and German injured soldiers.
Surgical career
After the war, Küss made innovations in urology at the Cochin Hospital, in particular in urinary drainage and vascular reconstructions in transplant cases. This came at a time when urology and vascular surgery were expanding as specialities with new diagnostics, particularly the introduction of intravenous pyelography in 1937 and David Hume's vascular developments on joining arteries. He developed the Boari-Küss method for elongating the ureter and contributed to the elaboration of placing a donor kidney into the extraperitoneal space or iliac fossa, a technique that has continued into the 21st century.
Two operations are particularly considered "historic" by contemporaries. Küss, together with Charles Dubost and Marceau Servelle, was involved in the first human-to-human extraperitoneal kidney transplant procedure on 12 January 1951. Another two surgeons, Oeconomos and Rougeulle, had previously assisted Küss with the laboratory experiments and were also present to assist. The procedure became known as the "Küss operation" owing to his chief role in it. Organs from four guillotined prisoners were used in four of the five kidney transplants. One kidney came from a living donor undergoing a kidney removal in a Matson procedure for hydrocephalus, where a kidney would otherwise be discarded. All the grafts were rejected.