User:Yngvadottir/Bjorn Thorbjarnarson

Bjorn Thorbjarnarson (July 9, 1921 – October 4, 2019) was an Icelandic-American surgeon who made his career in the United States. An expert on the biliary tract, he treated Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, and Andy Warhol in their final illnesses, and was sued over Warhol's death.

Early life and education

Thorbjarnarson was born Björn Þorbjarnarson in Bíldudalur in the Westfjords region of Iceland, the sixth of seven children of Þorbjörn Þórðarson, a doctor, and Guðrún Pálsdóttir; (In America, he used the simplified spelling of his name and the pronunciation "thor-bee-ON-a-son"). His brothers and sisters all pre-deceased him; among them was Páll Þorbjörnsson, a member of the Althing from the Westman Islands. After graduating in 1940 from Akureyri Junior College, which he reached on horseback or on a fishing boat, he earned his medical degree at the University of Iceland in 1947, was an assistant physician that summer in the Patreksfjörður region, earned a Candidate degree at Akureyri Hospital, and began surgical study in 1948 at New York Hospital under Dr. Frank Glenn. He served two years in the United States Navy in the 1950s.

Career

He spent almost all his career at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, since 1998 part of NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital, where he became a prominent biliary tract surgeon; he was a professor at Weill Cornell Medical College from 1968 until his retirement in 1989 when he was made Clinical Professor Emeritus of Surgery. According to his family, among his patients were Johnny Carson, Ellsworth Kelly, and J. Robert Oppenheimer.

In October 1979, he performed surgery for lymphatic cancer on the deposed Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi; he later wrote about the security precautions and the angry crowds outside the hospital.

In February 1987, he removed Andy Warhol's gallbladder; Warhol had postponed surgery for more than a decade because of a fear of medical treatment since being shot in 1968, but initially appeared to make a good recovery; however, his condition deteriorated and he died the following morning. The New York State Health Department concluded in April that the hospital had given inadequate care, but the office of the Manhattan district attorney found insufficient evidence to bring charges. In 1991, Warhol's estate filed suit for wrongful death against the hospital and those involved in his care, including Thorbjarnarson and Warhol's personal physician, Dr. Denton S. Cox, who had assisted in the surgery. Against the accusation that Warhol was given excessive intravenous fluids, the doctors maintained that his weak condition had led to his death of cardiac arrhythmia. A settlement was reached a few weeks after the trial began, and a later investigation by Dr. John Ryan, a retired surgeon and medical historian, found the hospital not at fault.

Personal life

Thorbjarnarson had twin daughters by Hulda Guðrún Fil­ipp­us­dótt­ir before migrating to the United States. In 1955 he married Margaret Brown, a nurse; they had two daughters and two sons, one of whom was the crocodile and alligator expert John Thorbjarnarson. The Icelandic writer Andri Snær Magnason is a grandson of his.

References

Category:1921 births Category:2019 deaths Category:20th-century surgeons Category:20th-century Icelandic people Category:University of Iceland alumni