O'Malley, Eoin

by Turlough O'Riordan

O'Malley, Eoin (1919–2007), cardiac surgeon, was born 5 April 1919 in Galway, one of seven children of Michael George O'Malley and his wife Christina (née Ryan). Michael George O'Malley (1896–1961) was the sixth son and second youngest of fourteen children (the youngest being the surgeon Charles O'Malley (qv)) of Peter and Mary O'Malley of Kilmilken, Maam, Connemara, Co. Galway, a prominent medical family. Educated at Rockwell College, Co. Tipperary, QCG (1904–06), and the Catholic University Medical School, Dublin (1906–10), Michael was amongst the first cohort of seventeen graduates in medicine from the recently constituted NUI on 24 May 1910. House surgeon at the Mater Misericordiae Hospital in Dublin, then senior demonstrator in anatomy at the Middlesex Hospital, London, he was made a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England (RCS) in 1914. Professor of surgery at UCG (1924–56), he was chief surgeon at Galway Central Hospital, greatly improving the quality of surgical teaching at the university and the hospital. He was also president of the Golfing Union of Ireland (1954–6). He died in Dublin in October 1961. A portrait by Seán O'Sullivan (qv) is in UCG.

Eoin O'Malley's mother, Christina ('Chris') Ryan, was one of twelve children (seven girls and five boys) of the noted republican and anti-treaty Ryan family from Tomcoole, Co. Wexford, headed by John, a farmer, and Elizabeth (née Sutton). Denis McCullough (qv) and Richard Mulcahy (qv) were uncles by marriage (married to his mother's sisters Agnes and Min respectively), and his two aunts Mary Kate and Phyllis (qv) in sequence married Seán T. O'Kelly (qv). Chris Ryan was a teacher in Ireland and abroad, and married Michael O'Malley in a joint ceremony with Agnes and Denis McCullough on 16 August 1916. Adopting a neutral attitude to the 1921 Anglo–Irish Treaty, Michael and Chris acted as a bridge between the warring, antagonistic views found in their families.

Eoin O'Malley was educated by the Jesuits at St Ignatius College, Galway, and later at Clongowes Wood College, Clane, Co. Kildare, where he played rugby. An outstanding scholar, he placed first in Ireland in Latin and French in his leaving certificate. After commencing his medical studies in UCG, O'Malley graduated from UCD with a first-class honours medical degree (MB, B.Ch., BAO) in 1942, at the top of his class (a distinction he achieved in all his undergraduate medical exams) with the gold medal. O'Malley is widely regarded as the singularly brilliant medical graduate of the UCD school of medicine of his generation. He won his rugby colours as wing-forward for UCD, and represented Connacht in 1942.

Completing his internship at the Mater hospital in Dublin, he was house surgeon at Southend hospital and the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in London, and subsequently a fellow in general surgery at the Lahey Clinic in Boston. He returned to Dublin as resident surgeon at the Mater, working as a general registrar. This role required him to live-in seven nights a week, exposing him to the work of the team of consultant surgeons, crucial in the days before specialisation. Practising general surgery as assistant surgeon at the Mater, he completed the M.Ch. (UCD), and became a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) in 1947. By then focusing on chest surgery, O'Malley was appointed consultant surgeon to the cardiac surgical unit at the Mater (1952), and was integral to the surgical advances made there over the next quarter-century. He was also at various times surgeon to St Luke's Hospital, Rathgar, and Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Dún Laoghaire, and consulting surgeon to the National Maternity Hospital (Holles Street, Dublin). Mostly, however, he worked at the Mater throughout his career, and maintained a private practice.

Cardiac surgery emerged through the 1950s as a distinct specialisation. O'Malley was awarded a fellowship by the James IV Association of Surgeons in 1962, travelling to the UK and USA to keep abreast of emerging best practice in what later became known as open-heart surgery. Conducting experimental surgical procedures on dogs (greyhounds, with their large hearts, were procured from failed trialists at Shelbourne Park race track), O'Malley was deeply committed to research directed towards improving patient outcomes. The skills and knowledge necessary to undertake complex and intricate surgical procedures required a range of supporting cross-disciplinary surgical and medical skills, and advances in anaesthesia, radiology, physiology and medical engineering were integral to advances in cardiac surgery. O'Malley excelled at knitting complex disciplines and processes together, engendering the cooperative teamwork necessary to undertake successful cardiac surgery. He performed the first open-heart surgery in Ireland at the Mater (17 December 1957), undertook the first Irish procedure using a heart-lung machine (9 March 1961), the first mitral valve replacement (23 March 1965), and the first aortic valve replacement (29 March 1965). O'Malley's research and surgical prowess was integral to the founding in 1971 of the National Cardiac Surgery Unit at the Mater, supported by Keith Shaw of the Royal City of Dublin (Baggot Street) Hospital, centralising the city's previously disparate and fragmented cardiac surgery facilities. O'Malley, the pioneer of open-heart surgery in Ireland, mentored a generation of surgeons in the Mater in the research and practice of cutting-edge cardiac procedures, many of whom went on to become esteemed colleagues; Freddie Wood and Maurice Neligan undertook the first Irish heart transplant at the Mater in September 1985.

O'Malley joined the Commission on Higher Education in 1962, the Medical Research Council of Ireland in 1963 (serving as chairman in 1970), and the Higher Education Authority in 1972. He was broadly in favour of the proposed merger of TCD and UCD in the late 1960s, arguing that it could herald the required rationalisation of Dublin hospitals; the contemporaneous fragmentation of the delivery of medical services and teaching greatly exercised him. A shrewd and adept medical bureaucrat, O'Malley was a member of the National Health Council (1968–72), a member of Comhairle na nOspidéal (1975–82), and was appointed a life governor of the National Maternity Hospital (1968). He was a member of the consultative committee on the general hospital services established in 1967, whose 1968 report, Outline of the future hospital system (commonly known as the 'Fitzgerald report' after the chairman, Patrick FitzGerald (qv)), urged consolidation of acute hospital services as part of a radical reconfiguration. It was widely ignored due to the lobbying of local political and medical vested interests, perpetuating the fragmentation that delivered suboptimal outcomes for patients.

Keenly aware of the evolving nature of both medicine and medical education, O'Malley continually sought to improve and refine surgical curricula. A new generation of leading Irish cardiac surgeons was schooled under him, and he left an indelible mark as a surgeon and teacher. Professor of surgery in UCD (1958–86), he published numerous papers in the Irish Journal of Medical Science, Journal of the Irish Medical Association, Thorax, and other journals. A thoughtful lecturer and examiner, exhibiting an attention to detail and concern for students, O'Malley gave unfailingly to his profession, students and patients, and was modest, unassuming and taciturn (which some misinterpreted as rudeness). He was integral to the establishment of the National Surgical Training Centre (1970), which, coordinated by the RCSI and the medical schools, was a key development in postgraduate surgical education in Ireland, and did much to augment indigenous surgical education and standards while also raising Ireland's international reputation.

A council member of the RCSI from 1965, O'Malley was president (1984–6) during the college's 1984 bicentennial, and on 6 October 1984 chaired the commemoration of the original granting of the college's charter; his presidency did much to augment the college's international reputation. He retired in 1985; the unit he founded at the Mater was formally dedicated as the Professor Eoin O'Malley National Cardio-Thoracic Surgery Unit in May 2002. O'Malley was emeritus professor of surgery at UCD after his retirement, and a founder member of the Irish Surgical Travellers Club. He was a member of the Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland, the International Society for Cardiovascular Surgery, the Surgical Research Society, and the James IV Association of Surgeons, and an honorary fellow of the American College of Surgeons, the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, and the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. Awarded an honorary MD by the NUI and an honorary D.Sc. by QUB, he delivered the distinguished visitor's address at the annual meeting of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery (24 April 1976), entitled 'Bernard Shaw's doctor's dilemma', elucidating the ethical issues challenging experimental surgery. He was president of UCD Rugby Football Club.

O'Malley married Una O'Higgins (qv), daughter of Kevin O'Higgins (qv), on 4 October 1952. Una described her marriage as imbuing 'a measure of political ecumenism' (O'Higgins O'Malley, 94), although many family members boycotted the ceremony celebrated by Bishop Michael Browne (qv) of Galway. They lived at various addresses in Donnybrook, Ballsbridge and Castleknock, before purchasing a house on Cross Avenue, Booterstown, renaming it 'Dunamase', its name when Una lived there at the time of her father's assassination (when she was five months old) in 1927. O'Malley's tireless commitment to surgical education and administration, alongside a gruelling surgical workload, university and RCSI commitments, and national advisory work, meant that Una took the lead in rearing their six children; these included Kevin Michael O'Malley, a consultant vascular surgeon in Dublin, and Christopher O'Malley, Fine Gael MEP for Dublin (1986–9) and Labour party councillor for Dún Laoghaire Rathdown (2003–04). Eoin proudly supported Una's active commitment to peace and reconciliation. A deeply devoted couple who were both devout catholics, the O'Malleys spent much of their retirement at their home on the shores of Lough Corrib, Co. Galway, fishing, sailing, and hunting with the Galway Blazers. They donated a 2.5-acre site on the banks of Lough Rusheen near Barna to BirdWatch Galway in 1997 to preserve the avian habitat in the area; it was later named the Small Wood sanctuary. O'Malley always had a strong interest in natural history and Ireland's past. Although shy and reserved, he was a convivial figure who was widely respected and liked in Ireland and abroad within and beyond medical circles. Eoin O'Malley died 19 April 2007 at the Mater hospital, Dublin. A photographic portrait is held in the RCSI.