Pioneering surgeon and Holocaust survivor George Berci, MD, died Aug. 30 at age 103.
Born in Hungary in 1921, he survived the Holocaust and earned his medical degree after World War II. He moved to Australia in the late 1950s, where he began to experiment with small cameras that could project internal images of body cavities onto a screen, according to a Sept. 4 news release from Los Angeles-based Cedars-Sinai, where Dr. Berci worked.
He would go on to collaborate with others to create laparoscopic and endoscopic surgical instruments that could project light into the body during surgery, according to an obituary published Sept. 13 in the The Washington Post.
Dr. Berci joined the department of surgery at Cedars-Sinai in 1967 and remained there until his death from COVID-19 complications. At the time of his death, Dr. Berci was the senior director of surgical endoscopy and innovation research at the health system.
"His profound legacy lives on in the hundreds — if not thousands — of medical students and surgeons influenced by his innovations and ideas," Edward Phillips, MD, executive vice chair of the Cedars-Sinai surgery department, said in the release.