Buenos Aires - Rene Favaloro, the surgeon who pioneered coronary bypass surgery, has killed himself in his home here. He was 77. His secretary found his body in the bathroom of his apartment. He had a wound in his chest and a gun was near his body.
Farewell letters from Favaloro were found in another room indicating suicide, police said.
In 1967, Favaloro performed the first bypass operation on a 51-year-old woman at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, using a saphenous vein taken from the patient's leg to detour blood around blockages in her heart, a technique still used today.
"He could be called the father of bypass surgeries," said Dr Marcos Nores, a cardiovascular surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic. "Before the 1960s, coronary heart disease was mainly treated with medications."