Jean-François Calot

Jean-François Calot (17 May 1861 – 1 March 1944) was a French surgeon best known for describing treatment of curvature of the spine in Pott's disease. He also described a method of treating tuberculous abscesses and defined Calot's triangle.

Calot was born in a farmer family of six children and spent his childhood in Arrens-Marsous, France. He received his bachelor's degree in 1880 at Saint-Pe de Bigorre and in 1881 moved to Paris, where he worked as a tutor to pay for his university education. While still a student he described Calot's triangle in his doctoral thesis, defended on 12 December 1890. He then worked as a surgeon at l'Hôpital Rotschild and l'Hôpital Cazin-Perrochaud in Berck. He described his technique for treating Pott's disease of the spine in a paper he read to the Academy of Medicine in Paris in 1896. Much of his work later in his career was in orthopaedic surgery, particularly the treatment of war injuries; he founded the Institut orthopédique de Berck in 1900.

Callot married Marie Bacqueville (d. 1934), and together they had four daughters.

• Calot's triangle – isosceles triangle bounded by the common hepatic duct, the cystic duct and the cystic artery; it remains an important landmark for surgeons performing cholecystectomy to avoid damaging the common bile duct.
• Calot's node – gallbladder lymph node.
• Calot's method – treatment of tuberculous abscesses by repeated puncture and immobilisation.
• Calot's operation – surgical correction of spinal deformity due to Pott's disease (spinal tuberculosis).

• Way LW, Stewart L, Gantert W, et al. (2003). "Causes and prevention of laparoscopic bile duct injuries: analysis of 252 cases from a human factors and cognitive psychology perspective". Ann. Surg. 237 (4): 460–9. doi:10.1097/01.SLA.0000060680.92690.E9. PMC 1514483. PMID 12677139. 
• Mounier-Kuhn A, Sutter B (2005). "[François Calot's concepts about the treatment of osteoarticular tuberculosis]". Hist Sci Med (in French). 39 (3): 303–14. PMID 17152776.