Prof. Dr. Alexander Chirkov is a world-renowned doctor in the field of heart diseases, operations and transplants. Performed the first heart transplant in Bulgaria and the Balkans in 1986. He graduated from the Higher Medical Institute (today MU-Sofia) in 1962.
Prof. Chirkov was born in Lom, Bulgaria on January 27, 1938, graduated from the Medical University in Sofia in 1962 and started working in the small town of Belogradchik. He left in 1966 for West Berlin, Germany and specialized there with the famous cardiac surgeon Prof. Büchler. He became a doctor at the University Hospital in the city, and then transferred to the University of Frankfurt am Main and the University of Freiburg, where he was a professor from 1981.
In 1984, he returned to Bulgaria, due to the invitation of academician Atanas Maleev, Rector of the Medical Academy (today MU-Sofia). The government commissions Prof. Dr. Alexander Chirkov to build modern cardiac surgery in Bulgaria. The Clinic for Cardiovascular Surgery, already established in 1977 at the Scientific Institute of Surgery of the Medical Academy, is taken as a base. In 1994, the Department of Cardiovascular Surgery was also established. Its first supervisor was Prof. Dr. Alexander Chirkov.
He performed the first heart transplant in Bulgaria and the Balkans in 1986. For many years he was Director of the hospital "St. Ekaterina". Prof. Chirkov died on November 24, 2020. in the city of Varna.
