It is with great sadness I am writing this obituary about our colleague Professor Oreopoulos who passed away peacefully April
25, 2012 after a courageous battle with cancer.
Dimitrios was a world-renowned nephrologist, but more importantly perhaps, a friend and colleague to many of us.
Dimitrios Oreopoulos was born May 24 1936 in
Alexandroupolis, Greece and raised in Athens where he studied medicine and
attained his MD degree. His MD thesis was on the "Kinetics of uremic
substances in the artificial kidney". From 1966 to 1969 he worked in
Queens University, Belfast, Ireland where he obtained his Ph.D. in
"Problems in Nephrolithiasis". He arrived in Canada in 1969 to join
the Toronto Western Hospital as a Senior Research Fellow and found he had to
study and work intensively while struggling with English, a language he had
only begun learning at age 30. He devoted his career to improving the
lives of patients with kidney disease through the development of innovative
treatments, particularly in peritoneal dialysis. Demetrios writes of some of
his experiences in a paper available open access here.
A YouTube video here
reviews some of his accomplishments.
Simply put, Demetrios is one of the fathers of peritoneal dialysis.
Dimitrios developed the Toronto Western Hospital
technique for Continuous Ambulatory Peritoneal Dialysis (CAPD), which
substantially decreased the peritonitis rate and extensively increased the use
of CAPD treatment in the U.S. and worldwide. Demetrios is credited with
pioneering peritoneal dialysis in children (he treated the first child with peritoneal
dialysis in 1978). The technique of peritoneal dialysis proposed by
Dimitrios avoids numerous perforations in the abdominal wall and significantly
reduced pain and the rate of infections compared with previously used
techniques thereby significantly increasing the quality of life. To achieve
this, Dimitrios initially manufactured a prosthesis and later modified the soft
catheter that allowed patients to treat themselves at home. His work in
introducing amino-acids containing PD solutions was a breakthrough in the
treatment of malnourished PD patients. Beyond Demetrio's contributions to
the science and practice of nephrology, he was a great teacher and mentor. Over
100 mentees trained with him in Toronto and then took what they learnt to their
respective countries and introduced PD to the benefit of milions of patients
worldwide.
Demetrios was very devoted to the compassionate care of
patients. He founded the Humane Medicine Journal and studied and wrote about
the ethical care of patients. His humanitarian endeavors continued in the Greek
community as a former President of the Hellenic Home for the Aged (1987-1995),
Greek Orthodox Education in Ontario (1996-2001), and Athens Villa (1997-2004).
He carried out his work with great humility, faith in God and a strong belief
in the intrinsic worth of all human beings.
Dr. Oreopolous is the author of over 550 original articles
and 230 book chapters. He founded and edited for the last two decades the Peritoneal Dialysis Bulletin that subsequently became the official journal
of the International Society for Peritoneal Dialysis. In addition to his
work in the area of PD, Dr. Oreopoulos is the founder of the International
Society of Geriatric Nephrology and the International Nephrology and Urology
Journal.
Dr. Oreopolous has received many awards dating back to 1978
when was the recipient of the first Kidney Award of the Canadian Kidney
Foundation to the Order of Honour from the Republic of Greece. In 1998, he
received the Belding Scribner Award from the American Society of Nephrology.
