Departmental Highlights Archive

1995 - Dr. Bruce Reitz performs the first Heartport procedure, using a device that allows minimally invasive coronary bypass and valve operations

The Heartport Port Access system was a revolutionary technology for performing major heart surgeries with minimally invasive techniques via small incisions between the patient's ribs, eliminating the need for a sternotomy or cutting of the breastbone.
 

1993 - Dr. Norman Shumway retires as chair of the department but remains on active emeritus status

From The Stanford Daily, Volume 202, Issue 69, 25 January 1993

Pioneering heart transplant surgeon, Norman Shumway, retires

...Shumway, 69, left the post he had held for more than 30 years earlier this month. Mandatory retirement laws said his time was up, and he agreed. "We need someone else with different ideas," Shumway said. "Some people hang around much too long. That's bad for the school and bad especially for the person." In Shumway's case, it's hardly been bad for the school. Thanks to the doctor's work in developing heart transplant techniques, Stanford's cardiology department has gained widespread prominence. ...
 

1992 - Dr. Bruce Reitz is appointed Chair of the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery

Reitz became department chair in 1992, succeeding his mentor Norman Shumway, MD, PhD, who in 1968 performed the nation's first heart transplant at Stanford. Reitz continued to build the department, bringing a number of the nation's foremost surgeons to Stanford, including Robbins. "I will always be grateful to him for recruiting me," Robbins said.

Reitz also played a major role in the resident education program at Stanford, which he reorganized and maintained as one of the top two or three programs in the country, Robbins said. In addition to all of his clinical and education work, Reitz has continued to do significant research, focusing on the mechanism of rejection for heart and lung transplants and ways to prevent it.
 

1990 - The first living lobar lung transplant is performed in the United States at Stanford

In 1990, Vaughn Starnes, MD performed the world's first lobar transplant using a lung segment from a living, related donor (the girl's mother). The next year, heart and lung transplant was performed on a one-month-old baby, the youngest heart-lung transplant patient ever.
 

1989 - Stanford clinicians first use the "domino" heart transplant procedure

From The Stanford Daily, Volume 197, Issue 12, 21 February 1990 — "Surgeon reuses heart to save another life"

... When patients with advanced lung disease, such as emphysema, require lung transplantation they usually receive a lung and a heart from the same donor. When lung transplantation is done without a matching heart, the patient's trachea often does not heal properly, blocking the air passages to the lungs. However, in many such patients, the heart which is removed along with the diseased lungs is actually healthy and strong. In fact, the hearts are exceptionally muscular because they have been pumping blood through vessels narrowed by disease. As an alternative to just throwing away the heart, in a procedure called a domino-donor transplant, surgeons can put the heart into another patient with a diseased heart. The domino-donor heart procedure was introduced to the United States in May 1987, and six operations had been performed in the U.S. by last June. Three of these operations took place at Stanford. Dr. Vaughn Starnes is head of the heart-lung transplant team at Stanford. He removes the diseased organs from the patient who is to receive the transplanted heart and lung. The replacement organs are brought in after being retrieved from a deceased donor at a community hospital, and Starnes sews them in. Meanwhile, the heart Starnes removes is taken to an adjacent room where one of Stanford's senior transplant surgeons heads another team responsible for implanting the heart in another patient. The heart-lung transplant and the heart transplant both take approximately three to four hours. ...

1984 - Falk Center dedication

The Falk Center dedicated its new headquarters in March of 1984, with a ceremony led by Dr. Norman Shumway, who performed the first heart transplant in the United States in 1968. Named after Dr. Ralph Falk--a physician who practiced in Boise, Idaho, for most of his career and founded Baxter Laboratories--and his widow, Marian C. Falk, the center comprises 52,000 square feet and is located just off Quarry Road on the Stanford campus, adjacent to Stanford University Hospital and Lucille Salter Packard Children’s Hospital. A large central atrium, with abundant ferns cascading down its walls and skylights overhead, makes the building bright, welcoming and airy. Staff and physicians occupy a mezzanine-style second floor around the atrium with research laboratories and other rooms occupying the lower floors. The Falk Center is one of the pre-eminent facilities in the world for cardiothoracic surgery and cardiovascular medicine.
 

1984 - Dr. Philip Oyer performs implantation of the world’s first successful use of a ventricular assist device as a bridge to transplantation

The Novacor, a left ventricular assist device (LVAD), was ready for patients in 1984. In August of that year, Philip Oyer implanted the device in a patient as part of the first success at using a mechanical device as a "bridge" to support a human in end-stage heart failure until a heart transplant was possible. The patient depended on the implanted pump for two weeks before transplant. He then survived in good health for more than 20 years, passing away in late 2004. Since that first surgery, more than 4,000 end-stage heart failure patients worldwide have received LVADs.
 

1981 - Dr. Bruce Reitz and his surgical team perform the world’s first successful combined adult human heart-lung transplant

In 1981, the first successful transplantation of the lung was performed at Stanford by Dr. Bruce Reitz and his colleagues as a heart-lung transplant. This was made possible by the use of the immunosuppressive drug, cyclosporine, and previous laboratory research performed at Stanford. Very often when people have heart problems the lungs are affected as well. Transplanting the heart and lungs together has become a very successful form of surgery for those patients who require it. The Stanford team is the longest continually active team performing lung transplantation, and new advances continue to be made in our research laboratories.
 

1974 - Dr. Norman Shumway helps create the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery and serves as its first chair

From The Stanford Daily, Volume 165, Issue 35, 10 April 1974:

Stanford School of Medicine Establishes Cardiovascular Department

...The new department, formerly a division in the Department of Surgery, is believed to be the first of its kind in the United States. "It is generally recognized that the Stanford program of cardiovascular surgery has for 15 years been among the most productive in the nation in research and education as well as patient care," Dr. [Clayton] Rich said. "Granting departmental status to cardiovascular surgery will serve to maintain at Stanford a distinguished program in a new discipline which has reached scientific and academic maturity," he concluded. ...

1968 - Dr. Norman Shumway and his surgical team perform the first successful adult human heart transplant in the United States

In early 1968, newspaper headlines around the world reported the news of a surgical team, led by Shumway, at Stanford that had successfully transplanted an adult human heart into another human.

Shumway, the Frances and Charles Field Professor of Cardiovascular Surgery, emeritus, is often regarded as the father of heart transplantation. The surgery that made the headlines on January 6, 1968, was the first successful procedure of its kind in the United States and only the fourth such attempt in the world. In the 1970s many medical centers abandoned transplantation because of high mortality and morbidity, but Dr. Shumway and his team persevered. 

1961 - Dr. Norman Shumway designs and executes the operation to replace the aortic valve with the patient's own pulmonary valve in animals (known today as the Ross procedure)

In the early 1960s, the search continued for the ideal aortic valve replacement. Based on earlier experimental work of Ellison in 1955 and Fisher in 1959, pulmonic regurgitation was shown to be well tolerated by the human and canine heart. This finding led Lower, Stofer, and Shumway to challenge the notion whether an autologous pulmonary valve could survive as a graft within the aorta. These researchers carried out the first pulmonary valve autotransplantation in canine models in 1960. The canines were divided into three groups; Group 1, the pulmonary valve was removed and transplanted into the descending aorta and a homologous aorta was used in place of the excised native pulmonic valve. Group 2, the pulmonary valve was resected and replaced by a fresh homologous valve. Group 3, the native pulmonic valve was resected and returned to its normal position as an autologous graft.

There were high operative mortality rates as the techniques were being developed, but 12 dogs from Group 1 survived the operative procedures and five long-term survivors were studied for up to one year. This study demonstrated a free autologous pulmonic valve graft would survive in the aortic position. Shumway continued this research and in 1966 along with Pillsbury, performed the first excision of aortic valve leaflets and the suturing of the native pulmonic valve into the aortic annulus in eight dogs. Once the pulmonic valve was excised, the right ventricle was anastomosed directly with the pulmonary artery. Two of the dogs survived for twelve and fourteen months and Pillsbury and Shumway noted, although the dogs tolerated free pulmonic insufficiency well, replacement of the pulmonic valve in the human being with a homograft would protect right ventricular function long-term.

1960 - Dr. Norman Shumway performs the first human open-heart surgery at the Palo Alto-Stanford Hospital to correct atrial septal defect

An atrial septal defect is a "hole" in the wall that separates the top two chambers of the heart. This defect allows oxygen-rich blood to leak into the oxygen-poor blood chambers in the heart.  

1960 - Drs. Norman Shumway and Richard Lower report the first successful orthotopic cardiac transplantation in a canine

The use of moderate hypothermia, cardiopulmonary bypass, and an atrial "cuff" anastomotic technique permitted Shumway and Lower at Stanford University to surmount the formidable barriers of orthotopic heart transplantation using the canine model in 1960.

1958 - Dr. Norman E. Shumway begins studying cardiac transplantation, building on his research in total body hypothermia

In 1949, as a resident at University of Minnesota, Shumway's doctoral research was on the effects of hypothermia on the heart. Specifically, Shumway studied the ventricular fibrillation threshold showing that as the temperature fell, less current was needed to cause the heart to fibrillate. In 1957, Shumway spent most of his time shuttling between his research at Stanford-Lane laboratories and his clinical cases at the Children’s Hospital, both in San Francisco. Stanford-Lane eventually moved to Palo Alto.

At this time, the key cardiac surgical question of the day was how to protect the heart during heart surgery. Drs. Shumway and Richard R. Lower, Shumway's first resident, tackled this problem in the laboratory, exploring an idea Shumway derived from his hypothermia experience. It was called "topical hypothermia"—a technique that builds on total body hypothermia by further reducing the temperature of only the heart via precisely routed ice-cold saline.