Pioneer Louisville heart surgeon Allan Lansing dies at age 92

Dr. Allan M. Lansing, a pioneer in heart surgery who put Louisville on the map for cardiovascular care ― and who generously founded and funded Bellarmine University’s school of nursing, has died.

He was 92.

Retired heart surgeon Dr. Laman Gray Jr., once Lansing’s rival, said he helped establish Louisville as a major medical center and provide heart procedures then only available only in Boston and Houston.

Lansing also helped recruit Dr. William DeVries to Louisville and served as spokesman for Humana Inc.’s groundbreaking artificial heart program, briefing hundreds of reports each day from around the world.

With his silver hair, blue eyes and charming Canadian accent ― he grew up in Ontario ― he was a natural for the role. The Courier Journal’s John Ed Pearce wrote that he was “movie-star handsome.”

And he had an ego to match his good looks and superb skills.

“I'm not the best heart surgeon in the world," he told another Courier Journal reporter in 1985, “but I do think I am probably the best in this region."

Some of his peers took umbrage.

"His mortality figures are good, yes, but they are no better than anybody else's," Gray said at the time.

Lansing squabbled with other star doctors, including Gray and DeVries, and he was fired as chief of cardiovascular surgery at the University of Louisville in 1972 after losing a power struggle with the new chairman of the surgery department, Dr. Hiram C. Polk Jr.

They didn’t speak for years but eventually made up, Polk said in an interview.

“I am glad we did,” said Polk, for whom U of L’s surgery department is named. “He was a good surgeon and a good person and conscientious inpatient care.”

Lansing performed the first kidney transplant in Louisville and the first coronary artery bypass.

Gray beat him by a month for the city’s first heart transplant, in 1984.

He wrote or co-authored 132 papers in medical journals and textbooks, according to his family, who said he also was the heart surgeon of choice for Jehovah's Witnesses because he did not prime the heart-lung machine with blood, which is unacceptable for those in the faith.

He was fabulously rich; he and his wife lived in an estate called Boxhill overlooking the Ohio River and gave it and another mansion in Glenview to Bellarmine University.

It was a far cry from the modest home where he grew up in London, Ontario, the son of a railroad dispatcher and a teacher turned homemaker.

Lansing worked his way through college and medical school at what was then called the University of Western Ontario on scholarships and doing magic tricks ― he met his wife, Donna, who died last year, while performing at a party.

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Lansing, who finished first in his class every year, later did a fellowship under renowned cardiovascular surgeon Dr. Michal DeBakey at Houston’s Baylor University before he and Donna moved to Louisville in 1963. They were married for nearly 70 years.

But Lansing worked incessantly, usually leaving home before dawn and returning after dark, and rarely saw her or his three children (two of whom are now physicians and one a registered nurse), The Courier Journal reported.

He recalled one occasion when his sister-in-law scolded his son, Peter, warning, "If you don't behave, I'm going to tell your father."

According to Lansing, his son replied: "I don't have a father."

Years later, Lansing said, "It has been a sad thing, but my family has taken second place to my work.”

Yet he said he had no regrets and attributed his success to hard work.

Colleagues described him as a perfectionist who had to be No. 1 at everything. He quit playing tennis because he could not play often enough to play well, he said.

Pearce wrote that Lansing could be charming but also “stiff-necked, proud and unyielding,” which Pearce said explained some of his feuds with fellow surgeons.

But doctors said he always had time to talk to patients and their families.

Gray, who himself went on to become an internationally renowned heart surgeon, said during an internship under Lansing he learned how to “respect and listen to and sympathize with patients.”

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Lansing also found time to volunteer to train doctors from Romania, treat patients in Panama and the Dominican Republic, and operate on children with congenital heart disease in the United States and other countries.

In 1982, he and Donna founded Bellarmine’s School of Nursing and Clinical Sciences at Bellarmine, which was named in their honor, and which provides 12 scholarships a year to nursing and other students. The university this week saluted him on its website as a former trustee and “great friend.”

In his family obituary, his survivors said he would be remembered for helping improve the lives of “countless patients with his gifted hands” and for many hours comforting families during difficult times.

“He gave his heart to those who needed compassion, along with a hand to hold and an ear to listen,” the family said. “He lived his life with grace, compassion, selflessness and love.”

Andrew Wolfson: 502-582-7189; awolfson@courier-journal.com; Twitter: @adwolfson.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Pioneering Louisville heart surgeon Allan Lansing dies at age 92