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Born in Paris, Dr. Jean-Marc Chevallier never moved from the city. After medical school in Paris University, Dr. Chevallier received his training in general surgery at Saint-Antoine Hospital where in 1978 he met his mentor and friend, Professor Paul Henri Cugnenc, future Chief of the Digestive Department of Hopital Laennec. Professor Cugnenc subsequently asked Dr. Chevallier to take the lead of the Digestive Department in Boucicaut Hospital.

The 1990s were the beginning for laparoscopic surgery in France. Near the Digestive Department was a famous orthopedic unit directed by Professor Raymond Vilain. Prof. Vilain famously created the specialty of Plastic Surgery and developed a well-known “consultation de la silhouette.” Women with excess weight came to this clinic to undergo abdominoplasties or brachioplasties as a means of losing weight. At that time, this type of practice was very unusual in a public hospital. The waiting list for surgery was 2 years long.

Professor Vilain’s main collaborator, Dr. Vladimir Mitz, proposed that Dr. Chevallier develops a laparoscopic surgery program by putting gastric bands on patients who were on the waiting list for the plastic surgeries. This was the beginning of Dr. Chevallier’s long-lasting involvement in bariatric surgery.

In the early 1990s, bariatric surgery in France consisted mainly of the vertical banded gastroplasty (VBG) procedure. However, France was already one of the leading nations in the bariatric field. Dr. Chevallier had worked in Saint-Antoine with Dr. Marc Legrand, who was an assistant of Dr. Mitiku Belachew in Huy, Belgium, one of the pioneers of the laparoscopic adjustable gastric band procedure (LAGB). Dr. Chevallier learned of Drs. Belachew’s, Cadière’s and Himpens’ achievements with the laparoscopic adjustable gastric band (LAGB) and also learned the technique. In 1997, along with Drs. JM Zimmermann, JP Marmuse, and J Dargent, Dr. Chevallier participated in the creation of the French Society of Obesity Surgery (SOFFCO).

In 1994, Dr. Chevallier had been promoted as full Professeur des Universités with a PhD in Anatomy. At that time, both Dr. Chevallier and Professor Cugnenc were anticipating the creation of a new public hospital in western Paris. In 2000, the l’Hôpital Européen Georges Pompidou was finally opened. He is currently operating in the Hopital Européen Georges Pompidou since its opening and performs mostly bariatric surgery.

While still working in a public University Hospital, Dr. Chevallier tried to study bariatric procedures as academically as possible; especially the LAGB and one anastomosis gastric bypass (OAGB), previously referred to as a “Mini Gastric Bypass” (MGB). The OAGB was first described in the USA in 1987 by Dr. R Rutledge. The operative technique involves anastomosing a loop of jejunum to a long, sleeve-like gastric bypass pouch. Rutledge named it the mini gastric bypass. In 2005, a randomized controlled trial (RCT) was published by Dr. WJ Lee in Annals of Surgery showing that OAGB was a shorter procedure, with less complications, and same excess weight loss than RYGB. Academically speaking, this RCT should have influenced many surgeons to favor the OAGB over the RYGB. However, it was not the case. The OAGB was still criticized for inducing bile reflux. This fact led Dr. Chevallier to study the OAGB. He first created a rat model of OAGB in the INSERM Laboratory directed by Dr. Bado. The research was conducted to study the effects of prolonged bile exposure of the stomach and esophagus. With his experience in the lab, and clinically by performing over 1600 OAGB procedures, Dr. Chevallier has been invited throughout the world to share his experience.

Dr. Chevallier also has a long history of involvement in the development of bariatric surgery. Along with Dr. F Pattou, he published the first monograph on Bariatric Surgery (Chirurgie de l’Obésité, Ed Arnette, France), which he presented in 2004 at the French National Congress of Surgery (AFC). On an international stage, Dr. Chevallier was the President of XIV IFSO World Congress held in Paris in 2009 and from 2012 to 2016, he was the President of the French SOFFCO. He has also been nominated as the President-Elect of the IFSO-European Chapter for 2020.

Dr. Chevallier’s specific academic duty in Paris is to teach Anatomy to all medical students, during Medical and Surgical schooling. He has published many books on Anatomy (Atlas d’Anatomie, vol 1–5, Ed Lavoisier, Médecine) and his fluency in both English and German helped him to translate foreign language Atlases. He is now chief of the Anatomy Department in Paris University 5.

Dr. Chevallier has been married for 37 years to Anne, the mother of his four children.

He dedicates his free time to discover France and the world with his family and enjoys reading books on the history and the architecture of the beautiful French monuments.

And above all, he loves listening to music and operas.