Einstein 60 - Personal Reminiscences

The Albert Einstein Israelite Hospital in São Paulo is now commemorating its 60th anniversary. The 60 years are being counted from the first meeting of the group of people who decided to build the Hospital, held at the house of the first President, Professor Manoel Tabacow Hidal. This group wanted to express the gratitude of the Jewish population of São Paulo for having been so well received and treated in the country where they chose to live.

The Albert Einstein Hospital in 2015

The Hospital was officially inaugurated in 1971.

In this year there was a Brazilian Congress of Otolaryngology in São Paulo and we had a Pre-Congress Course on ear surgery that was held at the Kleinberger Auditory of the Hospital. Professor Hidal, whom I knew from my medical school days, saw me during the lunch interval and invited me to visit the Hospital with him. We set a date about a week later and I joined him briefly at his office. Then we took an elevator to the 13th floor and visited each floor, coming gradually down the stairs until we reached the 1st floor, in which there was an enormous electric generator.

At that time only two floors had been completed, in all of the others the bricks were still visible,  and all of the rooms were empty. Prof. Hidal told me that, since the construction of the Hospital took many years, there was a rumor in the Jewish Community of São Paulo that it would never be finished... And they stopped giving donations. He felt that, although it would be difficult to administrate a hospital with such a small number of beds, it was the best thing to be done. And he was right; he again began to receive donations.

He could not afford to build at the same time the surgical rooms for general surgery and obstetrical surgery, so he decided to build the obstetric surgical rooms first. He felt that the Jewish mothers-to-be would like to deliver their babies at the Albert Einstein Hospital. Maybe this was true, but there was a problem: their obstetricians did not want to attend them at the Einstein. At that time it was considered to be too far away. 

Actually, the lack of surgical rooms was not a big problem. I performed a number of operations at the obstetric center. And so did my otolaryngological colleagues, Otacilio Lopes Filho and the late Marco Elisabetsky. The three of us organized together the Pan American Otorhinolaryngology Congress in São Paulo, in 1974. 

In 1976 William House was our invited guest for a Symposium on Sensorineural Hearing Loss, held at the Kleinberger Auditory in 1976. Prof. Hidal and Marco Elisabetsky were present at the opening ceremony. Dr. House was then pioneering the cochlear implants.

In 1977 I performed the first cochlear implant in Brazil. It was performed at the Albert Einstein Hospital. Cochlear implants are now well established as the best medical solution for profound hearing loss and intense speech discrimination loss, but at that time there was a lot of controversy concerning its merits and adequate indications. But this is something that often happens in Medicine; new procedures and techniques have a tendency to be rejected when they are first presented. 

Having worked at he Albert Einstein Hospital since 1971, I have watched its growth, its expansions, its involvement in high quality medicine and high quality research. And all of the Presidents of the institution, Manoel Hidal, Jozef Fehér, Reynaldo Brandt and Claudio Lottenberg, contributed to make it reach the level of medical excellence that we have today. But each step is a part of the journey, and I think that the courage and idealism of the Hospital founders were fundamental to establish its goals, its directions and its achievements.