Academician Mustafa Agabek oglu Topchibashev (1895–1981) (on the 130th anniversary of his birth)

An outstanding surgeon, scientist, teacher and healthcare organizer, one of the “patriarchs” and founders of the surgical school in Azerbaijan, Honored Scientist of the Azerbaijan SSR, Academician of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR, Hero of Socialist Labor, Professor Mustafa Agabek oglu Topchibashev was born on August 5, 1895 in the village of Goygumbat, Irevan province (West Azerbaijan). After graduating from the university in 1919, M. A. Topchibashev worked as a surgeon in hospitals in Nakhichevan and Baku, during the next 10 years (1920–1930) as an ordinator, and then as an assistant at the faculty surgical clinic of the Medical Faculty of Baku University. After defending his doctoral thesis in 1930, he was awarded the academic title of professor and M. A.Topchibashev was elected head of the Department of Faculty Surgery at the Azerbaijan Medical Institute (now the Azerbaijan Medical University), which he fruitfully led until the end of his life. In 1937, M. A. Topchibashev, for the first time in the world history of anesthesiology, developed and introduced into clinical practice an original method of anesthesia – injectable essential oil anesthesia, later called “Analgesin”. The use of the new method, characterized by the absence of negative effects of this type of anesthesia on the reflex autoregulatory mechanisms of the patient’s body, revealed previously unknown neuropsychiatric and neurophysiological phenomena. M. A. Topchibashev made a great contribution to the organization and provision of medical care to the wounded during the Great Patriotic War in the territory of Azerbaijan. On his initiative, a hospital specialization system was introduced, providing for profiling for the wounded and for the sick, which was taken over by the Department of Evacuation Hospitals. During these years, the result of M. A. Topchibashev’s innovative work was the “Apparatus for removing foreign bodies” designed by him, which made it possible to determine the localization of a foreign body in the body using the stereoscopic method. In 1941, the new device was first used by M. A. Topchibashev in a neurosurgical hospital in Baku to remove fragments from a wounded man with a shrapnel wound to the head. M. A. Topchibashev was the first in the world to use seawater as an effective blood substitute for massive blood loss in wartime conditions. Academician M. A. Topchibashev was a major surgeon of a wide range and successfully performed the most complex operations on the organs of the pleural and abdominal cavities, the skull. He made significant contributions to the development of gastric, biliary and pancreatic surgery and neurosurgery. He developed rational methods for the treatment of gunshot wounds to peripheral nerves and operative access to organs located in the subdiaphragmal space. His multifaceted scientific interest included issues of traumatology, thoracic and abdominal surgery, vascular surgery, oncology, neurosurgery, reconstructive surgery and urology. M. A. Topchibashev proposed an original method for plasticizing bone defects of the skull. M. A. Topchibashev is the author and co-author of more than 300 scientific papers, including 8 monographs and a 5-volume textbook “Private surgery”. Under his leadership and with his participation as a scientific consultant, 12 doctoral and 30 candidate dissertations were defended. M. A. Topchibashev was active in public activities. He was one of the 15 first founding members of the Academy of Sciences of the Azerbaijan SSR. For many years, he worked as chairman of the Peace Protection Committee of Azerbaijan, a member of the Friendship Committee with Asia, Africa and Latin America. Academician M. A. Topchibashev died on November 20, 1981 and was buried in the Alley of Honor.