Zbigniew Religa

Zbigniew Religa (1938 to 2009) was a Polish cardiac surgeon who also served as a politician. He finished his studies at the Medical University of Warsaw in 1963, trained in vascular surgery in New York and in cardiac surgery in Detroit, and later directed the cardiosurgical clinic in Zabrze, served as rector of the Silesian Medical University, and led the Institute of Cardiology in Warsaw. He is remembered as a pioneer of human heart transplantation in Poland, leading the team that performed the first successful heart transplant in the country on 5 November 1985. In 1995 he was the first surgeon to graft an artificial valve made from human donor tissue, and a team he led received a Brussels Eureka award in 2004 for an implantable pump for heart assistance. In parallel he sat in the Polish senate from 1993.