111th birthday of Vasiliy I. Kolesov, a pioneer of coronary surgery

We celebrated the 111th birthday of one of the pioneers of Russian and world surgery Vasiliy I. Kolesov (1904-1992) this year. He was one of the innovators in cardiac surgery and a renowned groundbreaker in coronary surgery. On February 1964 V. Kolesov was the first surgeon in the world to perform a successful off-pump mammarocoronary anastomosis, a shunt between the left internal mammary artery and the circumflex cardiac artery on a beating heart. This event kickstarted a new stage in surgical treatment of coronary heart disease. 20 years later this procedure in combination with R. Favaloro technique that involves the application of the great saphenous vein in coronary surgery became the most frequently used procedure in the world. The paper is devoted to the key milestones in Professor V.l. Kolesov’s life.