René Prêtre: “one could say that I ‘play surgery'”, like an artist or an athlete

René Prêtre: “one could say that I ‘play surgery'”, like an artist or an athlete – rts.ch

René Prêtre, world-renowned cardiac surgeon, one of the most respected and appreciated personalities in Switzerland, is playing the extensions of a prestigious career. A major guest on RTS’s 7:30 p.m. show, the eminent specialist looks back on his retirement, which is, to say the least, “active”.

In the summer of 2022, René Prêtre announced his retirement after 40 years of career and more than 6,000 heart operations, half of them on children and babies sometimes only a few days old.

“I am reaching 65 years old. I am of course going to do a little more surgery, but I have other projects that must come,” he said in 2022. The other projects in question: take a breath, read, travel, go to football with her boy.

But in reality, the man still performs several procedures per week, particularly at the CHUV, which does not hesitate to call him. At 67 years old, the “Swiss of the year 2009” has never really put away his instruments, on the contrary.

“I am not irreplaceable, but the pediatric surgery department at the CHUV was reorganized and I was asked to be a little more involved. They also kept me so that I could share my experience with my colleagues, but also for the children and their parents, and I am happy to do it,” he explains in the 7:30 p.m. of the RTS

A passionate surgeon

Total dedication, enormous work force, a certain sense of humor too, and, above all, extreme concentration and precision. Those who knew him still describe a more than passionate doctor, inhabited by the certainty that he can change the course of a destiny.

“Obviously there is passion behind it,” he admits. “It always made me smile when people said to me ‘your work’. ‘Work’ has a bit of a negative connotation. When you talk about an artist or an athlete, you say: ‘he plays the piano, he plays tennis’. For me too, we could say: ‘he plays surgery’.

Moreover, René Prêtre does not only operate in Switzerland. He still carries out humanitarian missions on a voluntary basis, in Mozambique and Cambodia in particular. In total, he saved 594 lives in these two countries.

The importance of transmission

But above all, the surgeon contributed to the training of local doctors, who today operate on up to 400 children per year.

For him, who refuses to go to work in these countries with a feeling of “charity” or “colonizer”, the “training side is essential”. The objective is to pass on the 70-year history of cardiac surgery to his Cambodian and Mozambican colleagues.