In Honor of Evandro de Oliveira, MD

Guilherme Carvalhal Ribas, MD, PhD

Evandro was graduated at the Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, and did his neurosurgical residency in Montevideo, Uruguay, with Prof. Ramon Arana, in a neurosurgical unit famous for its neurological and radiological backgrounds.

But it was a brief stay in Zurich with Prof. Yasargil in 1980, and his long fellowship at Prof. Rothon's lab in the University of Florida during 1981 and 1982, that defined his neurosurgical profile. These experiences happened very opportunely since they took place when Evandro already had a quite good neurosurgical experience acquired in Florianopolis, and constituted the base of all his posterior development already in São Paulo.

I had the privilege to meet Evandro in July 1982 when he was coming back from. His fellowship with Prof. Rothon in Gainesville, and I was coming from mine with Prof. John Jane at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. We started to work together at the Hospital Beneficiência Portuguesa in São Paulo ([Fig. 1]), where Prof. Raul Marino Jr. was starting the Instituto Neurológico de São Paulo, a very well-equipped neurosurgical center for our standards at that time due to Prof Raul efforts, and which then flourished particularly with Evandro's driving force and contributions. Subsequently we started to work together also at the Hospital das Clínicas of the University of São Paulo, also under Prof. Raul Marino Jr.

Fig. 1 Profs Evandro de Oliveira and Guilherme C. Ribas at the Microsurgical Laboratory at Beneficencia Portuguesa de São Paulo, the place he built and loved.

Evandro was with the dynamism of his 37 years old, and as his first 1^st assistant during the forthcoming years I had the privilege to witness his initial already exquisite development. He was blooming, starting to put together Prof. Yasargil's microsurgery technique with the microanatomy he learned at Prof. Rothon's lab. I remember Evandro going back and forth always with Prof. Yasargil Microsurgery Volume I at the time, and also clearly remember one episode, after a CP angle tumor operation, saying to him that the surgery was superb, and he answering me “I also did not know I could do it this way!”

Parallel to the thousands of patients he aided with the art of his technique allied to his anatomical knowledge and scientific contributions, I understand Evandro's major legacy as having being the one who consolidated worldwide Prof. Yasargil's microsurgery philosophy and technique together with the then new intracranial anatomical universe unveiled by Prof. Rothon's fellows, of which he was his major exponent. Within our technological era, Evandro brought anatomy back to the center of our specialty. We learned with him to think and to operate anatomically… His anatomical and surgical correlations became his trademark both in his neurosurgical practice and his publications and lectures.

But his main tools were not his magnificent anatomical knowledge or his finest skills, his main tools were his endless pursuit of excellence and, above all, his passion for neurosurgery. His achievements definitely came through his strong personality: Evandro was very charming and friendly, but also tough and difficult… And his main sources of energy undoubtedly were his lovely wife Marina, his daughters Romina and Sabrina and, more recently, his granddaughter Maria Eduarda.

Evandro, in the name of all our community, thanks for having brought us to the future of Neurosurgery you devised and were able to build!

• Professor Livre-docente of Surgery, Department of Surgery, University of São Paulo Medical School

• Full Professor, Albert Einstein Medical School, São Paulo, Brazil

• Visiting Professor of the Department of Neurosurgery of the University of Virginia, USA

• Co-Diretor of the annual Cambridge Lectures in Neurosurgical Anatomy, Cambridge, UK

• Neurosurgeon at the Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein, São Paulo, Brazil

Publication History

Article published online:
28 June 2021