Steve Lopez
When Dr. Bruce Gewertz arrived from Chicago 16 years in the past to work at Cedars-Sinai, he took word of his new neighbor.
“Once I moved in,” stated Gewertz, Cedars’ surgeon-in-chief, “there was this 85-year-old man within the workplace subsequent to mine and I believed, ‘Properly, how lengthy can that final?’”
At this level, there’s no telling.
Dr. George Berci, a Holocaust survivor and a pioneer of surgical approach, continues to be within the workplace subsequent door.
And final week, he marked his a hundred and first birthday.
“Till COVID,” Gewertz stated, “it was not unusual for me to come back into the workplace at 7 a.m. and discover George already right here working. And his achievements within the final 20 years of his life are most likely as necessary as within the first 80.”
At 101, Dr. George Berci of Cedars-Sinai reveals no signal of slowing down.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Occasions)
Berci started working at 7 a.m. Tuesday and had a few conferences on the docket. He informed me he reviews to the workplace about two days per week now, and works from house the remainder of the week, answering queries from different docs and checking in with colleagues all over the world.
Simply him, there isn’t a lot bodily proof that Berci is in his second century. The shoulders have rounded a bit, however he walks at a superb clip (in snappy two-tone wingtips), ducking by secret passages of the hospital to get to right here or there. His eyes are clear, his thoughts sharp.
A part of that’s simply plain luck; by some mixture of genetics, life-style and circumstance, sure individuals age extra slowly. And a part of it’s a reenergizing potion of ardour and goal.
Berci places on the white lab coat and goes to work as a result of the job he loves shouldn’t be performed.
However to be completely trustworthy, he was not in one of the best of spirits after we met. The information out of Ukraine was each horrific and haunting, given Berci’s personal struggling by the hands of brutal dictators.
“I hope it’s going to one way or the other enhance,” stated Berci, who recalled the German and Russian aggression that tore households aside in his day and value thousands and thousands of lives.
“We’ve got to assist them,” he stated of the Ukrainian plenty who’ve fled their smoldering nation.
An innovator of surgical strategies, Dr. George Berci was recruited by Cedars-Sinai Medical Heart in 1967 and has been with the hospital ever since.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Occasions)
Born in Hungary and raised there and in Austria, Berci was compelled right into a labor camp with fellow Jews in 1942 and endured the distress of grueling guide labor whereas practically ravenous to demise. Two years later, through the bombardment of Budapest by Allied forces, Berci’s labor camp guards have been distracted lengthy sufficient for him and different prisoners to flee. Berci went to work within the Hungarian underground, risking his life in an operation that created and delivered faux IDs to Jews in hiding.
When the warfare ended, Berci picked up the violin he had performed since he was a lad and deliberate a profession in music. However his mom waved a finger at that concept.
Berci’s father and grandfather had died, leaving the household destitute, so his mom put in a vote for one thing extra financially promising than music. She needed him to go to medical faculty.
Berci nonetheless loves music, however says he’s eternally grateful.
He made surgical procedure his specialty and was working at a Budapest hospital in 1956 when Russian forces crushed an anti-Communist rebellion, killing 1000’s. Bloodied victims arrived by the a whole bunch on the hospital, and when the drama subsided, Berci started plotting a course out of Europe.
A fellowship took him to Australia, the place he keyed on methods to enhance surgical approach. His improvements got here to the eye of Cedars-Sinai, which recruited him in 1967. There, he started growing endoscopic and laparoscopic strategies that at the moment are in widespread use to diagnose and surgically deal with illnesses of the kidneys, colon and gallbladder — the listing goes on.
In earlier instances, a surgeon carved into the physique. However with new units of instruments, the work is much less invasive and carried out by small incisions or orifices. Berci had studied mechanical engineering as a younger man and helped develop the tiny digicam utilized in these procedures, permitting surgeons a transparent view contained in the physique as they work.
Berci has written dozens of books and scientific papers on all of this. He informed me his newest e-book in regards to the historical past of biliary surgical procedure — “No Stones Left Unturned,” co-authored by Dr. Frederick Greene — was a labor of affection that concerned years of analysis.
He’s pushed largely, Berci informed me, by a need to scale back healthcare prices and attain extra sufferers. Much less invasive and more practical surgical procedures imply shorter hospital stays and sooner recoveries.
“There is no such thing as a doubt that his concepts and his work have modified the face of surgical procedure,” Dr. L. Michael Brunt stated in 2013 after producing a documentary on Berci’s life and profession. The Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons now has a lifetime achievement award in Berci’s identify, at the same time as Berci provides to his personal achievements.
“He’s consistently attending all of our conferences and making cogent references, and he’s outstanding,” Gewertz stated.
Berci’s present obsession is to teach the following era of surgeons and their mentors on refining gallbladder surgical procedure, so that each one stones are eliminated and follow-up surgical procedure shouldn’t be wanted.
“He’s put collectively a coalition of all of the senior gallbladder surgeons within the nation to make that an expectation of our coaching applications,” Gewertz stated.
Berci’s daughter, Katherine DeFevere, stated her father has all the time been in a position to rise “above the horrors and determine all of it out. … He’s essentially the most resourceful individual I’ve ever met, and he has essentially the most superb survival mechanism — this drive to outlive and re-create your self.”
However that may be difficult as you age, Berci informed me. He’s troubled and disillusioned each by the state of the world and the diploma of political division in america, and he’s nonetheless mourning his spouse’s demise three years in the past.
“Should you’re alone, it’s a unique ballgame,” Berci stated, and although he nonetheless has his beloved Italian-made violin, “it doesn’t work so nicely with 100-year-old bones.”
However Berci will get off the bed at 5:30 a.m., and if he doesn’t go for a stroll, he goes to a fitness center.
He watches what he eats. He doesn’t drink. He follows the Lakers.
And he’s nonetheless, at 101, all the time wanting to get to work.
Any plans for retirement? I requested.
He responded flatly, as if the very notion was preposterous.
“The reply isn’t any,” Berci stated.
Steve.lopez@latimes.com