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SALT LAKE CITY — President Russell M. Nelson of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has donated 35 volumes of medical journals and research to the University of Utah School of Medicine.
The records detail more than 7,000 surgeries done over three decades of his medical career as a heart surgeon, a news release from the church said. President Nelson spoke to University of Utah officials about the donation in a meeting in the First Presidency council room in the Church Administration Building Wednesday.
The former heart surgeon said reports of surgical operations in major hospitals are dictated by the surgeon and he kept copies of all of his operative records from 1954 to 1984 — when he was called to become an apostle. He said the reports of more than 7,000 surgeries "may be needed in particular by any living patients in need of additional operations."
The records include 30 books of operative records, three books of more than 100 of his scientific publications, a master patient index and President Nelson's Ph.D. thesis. A digital version of the records is also being donated, and the reports will be made available on an "as-needed basis" to be mindful of confidential doctor-patient relationships.
President Nelson turns 99 on Sept. 9. He was admitted into the University of Utah School of Medicine in 1944, received an M.D. degree in 1947 at age 22 and got his Ph.D. from University of Minnesota in 1954.
The church president was best known for his contributions in developing an artificial heart and lung machine small enough to function in an operating room. A press release from the church said the invention was made possible by support from his first wife, Dantzel, and that it heightened his appreciation for life.
"I think a surgeon is in a unique position to understand one of God's greatest creations — the human body," President Nelson once said. "Every segment of the body motivates me to faith."
President Nelson performed the first open-heart surgery in Utah in 1955, served as director of the Thoracic Surgery Residency at the U. and was chairman of the Division of Thoracic Surgery at the LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City.
"I am deeply grateful for the important role the University of Utah played in my education and surgical career," the church leader said during Wednesday's meeting. "Wendy and I are pleased to donate these valuable records to the University of Utah. Thank you for accepting these tangible tracts of my surgical career."
Those in attendance included his wife Sister Wendy Nelson, Elder Dale G. Renlund of the church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, University of Utah President Taylor Randall, Drs. Sam Finlayson and Craig Selzman and university board of trustees member Katie Eccles.
Randall said the university is deeply grateful for the volumes being donated. He said as individuals study President Nelson's records, they will be able to see how he was inspired and will remember him as not only a great healer of people but also a "great healer of souls."
"And (they will read) that you felt inspiration the entire time that you were performing your profession, which I think the world in general is in great need of," Randall continued.
The records will be housed in the Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library.
"We are so honored that you have entrusted the University of Utah to catalog and manage these important papers," Eccles said. "While they are there, they will be accessible to those who want to further medical research. They will be there to motivate new pioneering efforts in cardiology and, perhaps most importantly, to inspire young physicians for generations to come to use their gifts and talents as you did to improve the human condition."
President Nelson said the meeting was "a historic point in my life."
