Philippe Mouret’s father, Pierre, was an engineer who started his career in Paris, while his mother, Hélène, studied at Beaux Arts and worked in a famous fashion house. The couple lived in Paris and had their first child. Philippe’s brother, Jean-Claude, was born on December 28, 1936, and Hélène Devaux stopped working to take care of her child. In 1938, when she was expecting her second child, Philippe, the family decided to move, fearing a war was looming the horizon. They joined Hélène’s brother, Dr. Jean Devaux, in Lisieux. Dr. Devaux was a general surgeon who had received training in Paris, but moved to Lisieux as he had trouble finding career opportunities in Paris. Dr. Devaux would be the person who would later inspire Philippe to become a surgeon.
Philippe Mouret was born on September 29, 1938 at Lisieux in Normandie, France. He grew up watching his uncle work, and knew by the age of 7 that he would, too, become a surgeon. The family left Lisieux for Lyon in 1952, when Philippe was 14 years old. In 1955, Philippe started his medical studies, spending his summers learning about surgery practice with his uncle in Lisieux. He finally became a medical intern in 1960, at the age of 22 years old.
During his 4 years as an intern, Philippe acquired skills in multiple surgical specialties. Professor Rochet taught him gynecology, he learnt thoracic surgery with Professor Latarjet, pediatric surgery with Professor Guilleminet, general and digestive surgery with Professors Soustelle, Peycelon, Guillemin and Maillet, vascular surgery with Professors Wertheimer and Sautot and heart surgery with Professor Michaud.
From 1964 to 1966, he must put his career on hold to go do his military service, which was mandatory at the time, at the 27th BCA in Annecy. He comes back to Lyon and becomes the Chief of Surgery’s assistant at Professor Francillon’s clinic.
In 1966, a doctor who would soon change the course of Philippe’s career joins Professor Francillon’s service: Dr. Michel Cognat. Dr. Cognat was a brilliant OBGYN surgeon specialized in the treatment of infertility. He had had the opportunity to work with Dr. Raoul Palmer in the mid-1950’s, and would soon teach Philippe everything he had learned from the inventor.
Dr. Raoul Palmer, an OBGYN surgeon practicing at the Broca hospital in Paris, was tired of having to perform invasive surgeries on women just to diagnose them. Sometimes, the surgery itself could create complications, so Dr. Palmer had to choose between risking the patient’s life with potentially us workeless surgery, or stay without a diagnosis. So at the end of the 1930’s, he comes up with the idea of using a cystoscope through a small incision in the abdomen in order to see the pelvis before performing any surgery. He worked at improving his technique for more than a decade and finally published his celioscopic exploration technique in 1946. He then decided to take it a step further and go from simple celioscopic exploration to celioscopic gynecology. In 1956 and 1958, he presented his first films showing his celioscopic gynecology work.
Dr. Michel Cognat learnt Dr. Palmer’s technique during his time as an intern at the Broca hospital. When Dr. Cognat joins Philippe’s team, he transfers all the knowledge he acquired from Dr. Palmer to Philippe.
Now a general surgeon, Dr. Philippe Mouret wonders why the celioscopy technique hasn’t yet been used to perform gastroenterological surgery. Gastroenterologists were using endoscopy to observe digestive organs since the early 1900’s, but no one had ever thought of using celioscopy to operate on organs of the digestive system. This realization is what would lead Dr. Mouret to an invention that would change the world of gastroenterological surgery.
Dr. Mouret decides that before he can perform any surgery using celioscopy, he needs to perfect his technique and become the best at celioscopic exploration. He spends two decades perfecting his celioscopic exploration technique, using it, like Dr. Palmer had done before, to diagnose his patients before performing any surgery.
But Dr. Mouret comes up with a small but brilliant idea that would completely revolutionize celioscopic surgery. While Dr. Palmer only made one incision through which he would insert all the tools necessary for the procedure, Dr. Mouret decides to make two incisions, placed at two strategic and converging points of the abdomen, increasing the surgeon’s visibility and enabling surgical movements similar to the ones performed during open surgery.
Finally, on March 13th, 1987, Dr. Mouret welcomes a new patient who needs a cholecystectomy (gallbladder removal), but also complains about pelvic pains. The team decides to first perform celioscopic exploration to diagnose the pelvic pain, which was supposed to be then followed by a traditional cholecystectomy. But when the celioscopic exploration doesn’t reveal any issue, Dr. Mouret decides to move his celioscopic tools towards the gallbladder, and to try to remove it without opening the patient’s abdomen. And he succeeds. That day, Dr. Mouret performs the first ever cholecystectomy via celioscopic surgery.
Starting 1988, after performing and filming many other successful celioscopic cholecystectomies, Dr. Mouret presents his technique at various medical conferences worldwide. While most surgeons first reject his invention due to its complexity and novelty, they can’t ignore the major benefits to the patient, with lower risks of infections and much shorter recoveries. That’s when Dr. Mouret partners with the medical device company Karl Storz to create the first set of celioscopic surgery instruments named after him.
By 1990, hundreds of thousands of cholecystectomy are performed via celioscopy worldwide. The revolution has come. That’s when Dr. Mouret decides to push his invention even further. Because of the burden of traditional hospital procedures and the hefty cost of hospital stays, he thinks his technique should be used for any surgical procedure as a way to reduce cost on the hospital and burden on the patient. He decides to open the first ambulatory surgery center for celioscopic procedures and applies for permits to open his business.
But as the construction of his center ends, the permits are still not there. The French Health Ministry drags its feet, afraid of the impact of such an innovative center. Ambulatory centers are supposed to only accept short procedures, but Dr. Mouret wants to have the ability to extend stay to 24 hours in case of complications. That’s a problem for the council where ambulatory surgery is strictly defined as under 12 hours.
Meanwhile, the medical field is starting to recognize Dr. Mouret for his invention. In 1992, he receives the Delannoy Robbe Prize from the French National Academy of Medicine, rewarding his decades of work. One year later, he receives the Napoleon Bullukian prize from the Bullukian Foundation.
Despite the multiple acknowledgements, years pass and the authorities don’t seem to budge. Dr. Mouret’s creditors who invested in the new “Center” are waiting to get their money back. In the early 2000’s, he is forced to declare bankruptcy, and as a result is removed from the General Medical Council.
Unable to perform in France anymore, Dr. Mouret decides to move abroad. He travels the world, speaking at conferences about the benefits but also risks of celioscopic surgeries. He warns emboldened surgeons of the potential deadly complications of celioscopic surgery when done without proper training. He reminds his audience that it took him decades to improve his technique before he actually performed the first cholecystectomy in 1987.
In 2002, he finally settles in Hanoi, Vietnam, where Dr. Yves Nicolai, a colleague of Dr. Mouret’s, had recently opened a new private hospital. But Dr. Mouret was not one to settle in one place. He would share his time between Vietnam, where he would also teach at the Medical College of Saigon, India, and Italy, where he had been going and practicing regularly since 1980.
Dr. Mouret’s recognition blossoms starting 2004. He is named president of the “Lyon-Coelio International” Congress, first president and founding member of the French Society for Endoscopic Surgery (Société Française de Chirurgie Endoscopique – SFCE), and Honorary Professor of the Hunan Provincial People’s at the Hospital University of Changsa in China. In 2007, he is the first French surgeon to receive the Honda Foundation Prize in Japan, and receives the Gold Medal from the city of Lyon, where his career had started.
It seems nothing could have stopped Dr. Mouret in his path at this point. Yet after a day of skiing during the winter of 2007, a sharp pain near his clavicle let Dr. Mouret make a sad discovery. He had cancer, and it was too advanced to be cured. Nonetheless, Dr. Mouret kept practicing until a few weeks before his death.
In June 2008, he received one last award: the Honor Prize at the Private Hospital Practice Trophies. On June 20, 2008, Dr. Philippe Mouret passed peacefully at his ranch in the suburbs of Lyon. He left behind his wife and assistant, Christine, his 6 children, Laurence, Hubert, Bertrand, Pierre Philippe, Hugues and Maud, and his 13 grand-children.
