Gordon Murray: heparin, hemodialysis and hubris

Gordon Murray (1894-1976), a brilliant and innovative surgeon who spent the majority of his professional career at the University of Toronto, Ont., Canada, is properly credited with having performed the first successful hemodialyses in humans in North America. Neither he nor Kolff, working in the Netherlands, were aware of each other's work during the middle 1940s when wartime hampered communication. Murray's extensive investigations and experience in the use of heparin in vascular surgery laid the groundwork for the use of this anticoagulant with the artificial kidney. He first designed a coil dialyzer in which cellophane tubing was wound about a steel frame. His second-generation apparatus was a plate dialyzer. In all, he performed dialysis on 11 patients with presumed acute renal failure, 50% of whom survived. Those who died succumbed to sepsis or irreversible chronic renal failure. Not much has changed in 50 years.