Keith Meares Shaw, who died on February 26th aged 81, was a key figure in the development of heart surgery in Ireland, especially open-heart surgery. He was also a highly accomplished thoracic surgeon. The importance of his contribution was underlined last year when the new £6 million cardiac unit at St James's Hospital, Dublin, was named after him - an indication of the respect in which his work was and is held. By then he had retired for 13 years. Keith Shaw was born in Dublin on July 26th, 1919, to William Shaw and Anne (nee Meares). He had three sisters. He was educated at Mountjoy School and Trinity College Dublin and qualified as a doctor in 1942.
His subsequent career brought him to the London Chest Hospital for four years in the 1940s and to many Dublin hospitals. He had returned to an Ireland in which TB was rampant and worked as a surgeon in the sanatorium in Castlerea. He was a respected thoracic surgeon and became a world authority on lung surgery.
Keith Shaw was one of those who developed open-heart surgery here in the 1960s. And he was closely involved with Prof Eoin O'Malley in establishing the heart-surgery unit at Dublin's Mater Hospital. Initially, open-heart surgery had been conducted in about six hospitals in the city. Gradually, the locations narrowed to Baggot Street and the Mater. Centralising the work in the Mater enabled the development of a centre of excellence which was able to apply the highest international standards to heart surgery.
Had Keith Shaw adopted a "what we have we hold" attitude and insisted on retaining heart surgery at Baggot Street, the development of this important centre would, at the very least, have been postponed.
Ireland's first heart transplant was later performed in the Mater in the year of his retirement, 1987, by Freddie Wood and Maurice Neligan.
Colleagues remember Keith Shaw as an extraordinarily pleasant man to work with, kind and considerate and well liked and someone who enjoyed going for a pint with his staff.
He was president of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland between 1978 and 1980, and published a considerable body of research.
Outside the operating theatre he was a keen golfer and was, at one stage, captain of Carrickmines Golf Club. He was also a good swimmer and once saved his son's life off the coast of Jersey.
He entered into retirement with some doubts, but to his surprise found the experience pleasant. He devoted himself to gardening and painting.
Keith Shaw's medical career encompassed two worlds - TB in the 1940s and 1950s and cardiac surgery from the 1960s onwards. He handled each with accomplishment and aplomb and made a positive and significant difference in both.
He is survived by his wife Dorothy (nee Poignand) whom he married in 1947, son Stephen and sisters Sylvia (Dawson) and Betty (Harkness).
Keith Meares Shaw: born 1919; died, February 2001