jacques himpens

Jacques Himpens is an Emeritus Clinical Professor of Surgery and staff member of the Bariatric Surgery Department at the Delta CHIREC hospital, Brussels.

He performed the first robotic surgery on a human (laparoscopic cholecystectomy, March 1997).

He performed the first laparoscopic gastric bypass in Belgium in 1999 and the first laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy, followed by the first biliopancreatic diversion with duodenal switch in 2001. Starting 2003, he and his team at the St Blasius Hospital, Dendermonde, and the St Pierre University Hospital, Brussels, performed close to 2000 laparoscopic bariatric procedures per year, encompassing all classic bariatric operations. By 2018, he had performed over 15,000 laparoscopic obesity procedures, many of them revisional.

He was President of IFSO in 2017-2018 and is now a member of the Board of Trustees and life member of IFSO. He is currently Chair of the Senior Advisory Board of IFSO European Chapter.