I first met Keyvan Moghissi, who has died aged 98, in 1980 when I shared a flat with his son, Alexander, a close friend of mine. Keyvan was a distinguished cardiothoracic surgeon; what he really enjoyed was healing people. His kindness, care and empathy for his patients was renowned, and came through in his memoirs, Off My Chest: Tales of a Cardiothoracic Surgeon (2018), From My Heart (2024) and In My Memory (2025).
Born in Tehran in what was, he liked to remind people, still known as Persia, Keyvan was the second of six children of Monireh Rouhani, a teacher, and Ahmad Moghissi-Chirazi, a civil servant; the family were members of the progressive, pacific, often persecuted Bahá’í faith.
A bright, curious boy, Keyvan went to Dar ul-Funun secondary school and followed his elder brother to medical school in Tehran; in 1947, he enrolled at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, where he gained his surgeon’s diploma. Originally set on an academic career, after visiting Britain in 1954 to study cardiothoracic surgery he became a practitioner.
He settled in Britain, having met Elsie (nee Alexander), a Moorfields ophthalmic nurse, in Geneva. They married in the mid-50s. Keyvan worked at various hospitals, including Edgware, Nottingham and Southampton, and did cardiothoracic surgical rotations at the Hammersmith, Harefields, Middlesex and Great Ormond Street; in 1970, he was appointed consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at Castle Hill hospital, Hull. There, far from the fountains and pomegranates of Persia, he set about creating a major European centre for heart surgery and a hub of analytical research.
In 1979 he organised the European Thoracic Surgery Club, the forerunner of the European Association for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery, of which he was president in the 80s. Keyvan was a pioneer of various surgical developments, such as heart bypass grafting, laser surgery and photodynamic therapy. His honours are too numerous to list, and while he was gratified by them, he was most proud of his achievements as an improver and sometime saver of lives. Known for his generous good humour, he took medicine personally and individuals seriously. It was often hard. He retired in 1994.
At school Keyvan had learned the violin, well enough to be accepted as a pupil of Abolhasan Saba, widely revered as a great teacher of both Persian and western classical violin. Keyvan later wrote: “My personal therapy for stress is to retire to my office for 20 minutes and listen to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.”
Elsie died in 2021. Keyvan is survived by Alexander, his grandchildren, Mico and Jonny, and his siblings, Minou and Chala.
