Prof. Jacek Moll has headed the pediatric cardiac surgery ward at the Polish Mothers' Memorial Hospital in £ód¼ since 1990. Moll, born in 1949, is the son of pioneering cardiac surgeon Jan Moll, and his son Maciej is also training to be a cardiac surgeon. "Medicine runs in the family. My wife is also a cardiologist and we work together," says Moll.

Moll studied medicine at the Medical University in £ód¼ immediately after graduating from the department of mechanics at the £ód¼ University of Technology. "I had no intention of actually treating people. I wanted to be an engineer specializing in medical equipment and I thought that some medical knowledge might come in handy," he says. "But I knew that I was going to be a doctor as soon as I finished the first year." Moll has no regrets about spending five years at the University of Technology as this has given him a different way of looking at things. He holds two patents in the United States and one in Poland for artificial heart valves. Moll worked with his father at Sterling Hospital in £ód¼ before moving to Prof. Zbigniew Religa's Cardiac Surgery Clinic in Zabrze, southern Poland. He spent much of the 1980s studying in the United States and Switzerland on scholarships. He was the first Polish surgeon to perform extensive surgery on a complex congenital heart defect-on a one-month-old baby.

"Operating on a child is very different from operating on an adult," he says. "The problem is not so much the tininess of a newborn's heart as that can be easily overcome with a magnifying glass. The problem lies in the complex congenital defects that have to be corrected." Prof. Moll's small ward only has 15 beds yet manages to notch up around 450 operations a year-an impressive figure but demand is even greater. It might be possible to add a couple of beds but expanding the ward would be difficult and expensive. In any case, there are no funds available.

Jacek Moll has always been referred to as "Moll junior" to set him apart from his father, "Moll senior." Recently, however, he has assumed the mantle of "Moll senior" with his erstwhile title being passed on to his son Maciej.

"I have accomplished a lot in pediatric cardiac surgery but I am well aware I will never achieve my father's medical standing. Cardiac surgery was in its infancy back then and he was a real trailblazer," he says. Jan Moll died of a heart attack in 1990 but is still remembered in £ód¼ where a street and a school have been named after him. He was an honorary member of many scientific associations in the United States and Europe and trained a lot of specialists. On Jan. 4, 1969, Jan Moll performed a heart transplant in £ód¼, becoming the first surgeon in Eastern Europe to do so. The patient only survived three hours and 10 minutes. The operation caused quite a ruction with protests flooding in from physicians and lawyers. Poland was a very different place 40 years ago. The medical community was psychologically unprepared for heart transplants and the legal system did not cater for them. Prof. Jan Moll's first heart transplant was his last.

Maria Sondej