Jesus Vaquero, MD, PhD, 1950-2020 OBITUARY

Abstract

At the age of 70, and after a long struggle with the sequelae of a brain hemorrhage, Prof. Jesús Vaquero lost his final chance at survival when COVID-19 claimed his life on April 17, 2020. He had suffered a spontaneous parietal bleeding the previous December, after isolating himself in his office to prepare a special lecture he was scheduled to deliver at the Spanish National Academy of Medicine and Surgery—a lecture that was ultimately never given. Born in 1950, right in the middle of the last century, Jesús Vaquero discovered his vocation as a physician and neuroscientist at the School of Medicine of the Complutense University in Madrid, Spain. In his early career, he focused on observational studies about the effects of corticosteroids in traumatic spinal cord injury, a subject that would later become his primary field of interest, leading to pioneering and unmatched experimental and clinical research.