James Monro - Telegraph Having trained at The London Hospital, Monro was registrar to the newly formed cardiac unit there and later senior registrar to the thoracic unit. Between these two appointments he spent two years working at the Green Lane Hospital in Auckland, New Zealand, under Brian Barratt-Boyes, who was starting the cooling technique in small babies which gave protection to the brain while heart defects were being corrected. On one occasion at The London, Monro was called to a lift where a patient, with a nurse in attendance, was on a trolley with his wife and daughter trapped at the far end. It was apparent that the patient's airway was completely blocked by his swollen tongue and he was turning from blue to black. Realising that he had to perform an immediate tracheotomy, Monro grabbed the nurse's scissors (still attached to her belt by a chain) and managed to cut a hole in the patient's neck and into the windpipe - at which point the patient turned bright pink within seconds, and was taken to theatre, where the operation was completed. In 1973 Monro joined Sir Keith Ross at Southampton as consultant cardiac surgeon, and over the next 30 years operated on more than 10,000 adults and 2,000 children, while playing a pivotal role in seeing the city's cardiac unit become a world leader and increasing the number of operations fivefold. He also wrote two books on cardiac surgery and published numerous papers. James Monro was born on November 17 1939 in Singapore, where his father was a Professor of Surgery. Jim was evacuated with his American mother and eight-week-old old sister shortly before the fall of Singapore in December 1941; they sailed to Australia and from there to the United States, spending the rest of the war in Virginia with his mother's family. His father, who remained behind, was interned in Changi jail and did not see his family again for nearly four years. After the war the family returned to Singapore. Jim was sent to school at Sherborne, then went on to The London Hospital, where his father had studied before him. Many of his Monro ancestors had been doctors, while his maternal great-grandfather - Major Walter Reed of the US Army - had discovered the cause of, and the cure for, yellow fever; the military hospital in Washington, DC, is named after him . In 2001, in response to the Bristol Inquiry into high death rates among babies who had undergone cardiac surgery, Monro was asked to chair a committee to review paediatric surgery across the whole of Britain. This produced the Monro Report, which called for a reduction in the number of units performing children's heart surgery; to his frustration and disappointment, the committee's recommendations were not acted on. Monro was passionate about the pursuit of excellence and the care of his patients, and was seen as a role model and mentor by many of today's most eminent surgeons. In 2001 he was elected president of the Society of Cardiothoracic Surgeons, and two years later he became president of the European Association for Cardiothoracic Surgery, of which he had been a co‑founder. As well as being an accomplished skier, Monro was in his youth an international rifle shot for Scotland; he was also a proficient golfer, and played tennis in the same men's four every week for 40 years. In retirement, despite being diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2006, he lived life to the full, continuing to enjoy his family and home, his wide circle of friends and his new found talent as an artist. He kept horses, dogs, chickens, ducks and even a peacock, and became an adept midwife to his flock of Jacob sheep. He is survived by his wife, Jane, and their three children. James Monro, born November 17 1939, died August 29 2013