A life dedicated to patients
Yves Cotrel was born in Dinan, Côtes d'Armor (Brittany). He was the eldest of three children in a close-knit, modest family.
After completing his secondary education at the Cordeliers school, he set his sights on medicine, a vocation born at an early age.
He left Brittany for Paris in 1943 to pursue his studies at Faculté de Médecine.
In 48 , during a replacement internship in the maternity ward of the Neuilly hospital –he initially intended to become an obstetrician - he agreed as a favor to a friend to spend a month at Institut Calot in Berck. This was a sea-side sanatorium where hundreds of patients suffering from osseous tuberculosis were hospitalized. This experience, which was intended to be temporary, steered him towards a career in orthopedics.
En 1958, he seized the opportunity of a 6-month fellowship in the United States to familiarize himself with the techniques of those whose methods he had studied, with a view to sharing and improving them on his return to France.
Enriched by his american experiences, and in charge of the ever-expanding spinal deviation department, he put into practice the ideas that had germinated during his long career.
Between 1959 and 1977 he came up with :
- the EDF (elongation, derotation, flexion) plaster frame and corset
- pre-operative continuous traction done by the patient himself
- a surgical table for intraoperative correction by elongation, derotation and lateral flexion of the spine in prone position
- use of an autogenous tibial graft, embedded between 2 hooks
- the transverse traction device (DTT) to combine the axial traction of the Harrington rod with transverse apical traction.
He also got involved outside the Institut Calot:
1966 : Surgeon of the “Village de l'Espérance” Boëge (Haute Savoie) and
expert surgeon for the Social Security
1967 : Yves Cotrel became the first foreign member invited at the Scoliosis Reseach Society meetings in the United States, as early as their second meeting. The S.R.S. aimed to make great contribution to the development of knowledge of spinal deviations, “by initiating and stimulating research, standardizing terminology, taking charge of the education of young surgeons and organizing high-level scientific confrontations every year.”
En 1977, a triple cardiac arrest forces Yves Cotrel to stop all professional activity. Classified as a "permanent invalid", he was forced to leave Institut Calot. He found haven in Taden, near Dinan, in his family house.
Between 1978 and 1983 in his garage-turned-workshop, he devoted himself to research the treatment of scoliotic deviations, and developed the implantable surgical instrumentation that would henceforth enable three-dimensional correction of spinal deformities, immediate stabilization of pathological spinal columns and early post-operative setting (2 days after surgery) without the need for external support by cast or immobilization corset.
Developed with Professor Jean Dubousset of Hôpital St Vincent de Paul in Paris, this new instrumentation was to be known as “C-D instrumentation”. It was first adopted in the United States and then worldwide. The verry first operation was performed on a teenager by Professor Dubousset in January 1983. In October of the same year, the CD was used for the first time on an adult patient by Dr Michel Guillaumat at the Hôpital Saint Joseph.
From 1988 to 1998, Yves Cotrel chaired the Groupe International de Chirurgie Rachidienne Cotrel-Dubousset. The GICD was created in 1986 to “enable spine surgeons around the world to exchange experiences through national and international meetings, and to educate young surgeons in new techniques, particularly CD instrumentation”.
In 1988, in memory of the Eisendrath Fellowship he had held in 1958, a GICD fellowship was set up, enabling foreign surgeons to come and familiarize themselves with the new instrumentation: 60 fellows from all over the world were welcomed to Berck and trained in the use of CD instrumentation. Courses are organized throughout France and the rest of the world.
In 1999, with the support of his entire family, he created the Cotrel Spinal Research Foundation, under the aegis of the Institut de France. Its mission is to “coordinate, support and promote research at national and international level”. Its first research topic is idiopathic scoliosis.
He would remain the active Honorary President until his death on January 29, 2019.
For further information...
Milestones
1969 Consultant surgeon, Ernest Conseil Hospital, Tunis.
Administrator and member of the scientific board, Institute for Research on Skeletal Diseases (IRMS)
1970 Président of “Groupe d’Etude de la Scoliose” (GES), created in 1968 with Dr Christian Salanova (Toulouse), in order “to generalize knowledge of scoliosis, promote clinical and experimental research, and encourage the exchange of ideas between French and foreign doctors in this field. »
1974 Consultant surgeon at Saint-Vincent Hospital, Paris.
1977-1991 Technical advisor and Consultant surgeon, Ministry of Public Health and Population in Luxembourg
1978-1982 Founder and Chairman, Association Bretonne pour l’Etude des Maladies du Rachis (A.B.E.M.A.R.)
1979-1984 Director of Œuvre d’Hygiène Sociale of Côtes d’Armor.
1993 Creation of the University Chair “Marie-Lou et Yves COTREL”, for Orthopaedic Research, at the Université de Montréal – Québec (Canada)
1995 Honorary member of Notre-Dame Hospital, Montreal, Canada.
1995 Honorary member of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Montreal, Canada.
Member of scientific societies :
French Societies :
1961 Associate member of Société Française d’Orthopédie et de Traumatologie
1961 Member of Société Nationale Française de Médecine Physique
1963 Member of Société Nationale Française de Thalassothérapie
1967 Member of Société Française de Chirurgie Orthopédique et Traumatologique
1967 Member of Collège Français des Chirurgiens Orthopédistes et Traumatologues
1969 Member of Association Française d’Appareillage
Foreign Societies :
1965 Foreign associated member of Société Belge d’Orthopédie, de Traumatologie et de Chirurgie de l’Appareil Locomoteur.
1966 Member of American Congress of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
1967 Honorary Member of Societade Bresileiria de Orthopedia e Traumatologia
1967 Member of American Scoliosis Research Society
1969 Member of Société Internationale de Chirurgie Orthopédique et Traumatologique
1971 Honorary Member of Société de la Scoliose du Québec, Canada
1973 Honorary Member of Sociedad Venezolana de Cirurgia Ortopedica y Traumatologia
1973 Corresponding Member of Sociedad de Ortopedia y Traumatologia del Litoral, Rosario, Argentine
1973 Membre Correspondant de la Sociedad Argentina de Ortopedia y Traumatologia
1975 Corresponding Member of Yugoslav Society of Orthopedics and Traumatology
1976 Honorary Member of the Scoliosis Research Society
1977 Corresponding member of the Sociedad Espanola de Cirurgia Ortopédica y Traumatologica
1978 Honorary member of theSociedad Espanola de Rehabilitacion
1979 Honorary Fellow of the Cuban Society of Orthopedic and Traumatology Inc.
1979 Honorary Fellow of the British Orthopedic Association
1985 Member of Academia Internationalia Scientiarum de Organo Axiale Hominis – Bratisalva, Slovakia
1990 Corresponding Member of the Australian Spinal Society.
1991 Honorary member of the Sociedad de Orthopedia de Jalisco, Guadalajara, Mexico
Awards
1958 Winner of the Eisendrath Scholarship from the Paris Faculty of Medicine
1980 Officer of Ordre Grand-Ducal de la Couronne de Chêne of Luxembourg
1989 Nessim Habif World Prize for Surgery awarded by the University of Geneva
Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, Ministry of Public Health
Induced into the Miami Children Hospital’s Hall of Fame, Etats-Unis
1990 Commander of l’Ordre Grand-Ducal de la Couronne de Chêne of Luxembourg
1995 Honorary member of the Hôpital Notre-Dame de Montréal and the Faculty of Medicine of the Université de Montréal, Canada
1999 Gold Medal of the Institut de France awarded on February 1, 1999 by Pierre Messmer, former Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Institut
2000 Officer of the Légion d’Honneur. Insignia presented on June 13, 2000 at the Palais de l’Institut de France, by Pierre Messmer, Chancelier de l’Institut
2001 Gold medal from the Société d’Encouragement au Progrès
2007 Commandeur de la Légion d’Honneur. Insignia presented on May 16, 2007 at the Palais de l’Institut de France by Mr Gabriel de Broglie, Chancellor of the Institute
Holder of 21 invention patents.
Author of scientific publications translated into English, Spanish, Italian and Chinese, and of numerous conferences, presentations and operating demonstrations worldwide.
Author of the book “Dans les sables de Berck” published in French by the Fondation Yves Cotrel – Institut de France (2003), in English* in the United States by the Cotrel Spinal Research Foundation (2004) and in Chinese in Beijing (2006) and distributed in China, Taiwan and Russia.
*for sale to benefit research
