Departmental Highlights Archive
2014
Pluripotent cells created by nuclear transfer can prompt immune reaction, researchers find
Stanford researchers find that genetic differences in mitochondria contained in egg cells used in a process known as nuclear transfer can prompt rejection by the immune system in mice.
November 20, 2014
Could Google Glass Give Surgeons an Edge?
An app used by resident surgeons helps them identify complications faster than standard instruments.
November 17, 2014
Australian doctors perform pioneering heart transplants (incl. commentary from Chairman Joseph Woo)
Pioneering heart transplant surgery announced Friday in Australia may lead to a new option for patients awaiting transplants by boosting the number of donor hearts available.
October 25, 2014
Stanford Heart Transplant Recipient Celebrates Historic 30-Year Anniversary
The Bay Area’s Lizzy Craze is America’s longest-living pediatric heart transplant recipient to survive with an original donor heart. She was the youngest successful heart transplant recipient in America at the time of her transplant in 1984.
October 07, 2014
Video Game Technology and Surgical Expertise Meet in Groundbreaking Tool at Stanford Children’s Health to Help Parents Understand Complex Heart Repair
Stanford Children's Health has launched the first in a series called "Moving Medicine: An Interactive 3-D Look at Conditions and Treatments." First up? An animated, interactive and three-dimensional tool to better understand and communicate one of the most complex birth defects of the heart - and one of the most challenging to repair.
September 3, 2014
Physicians deactivate heart pump with catheter-based approach
A mechanical pump supported a failing heart, but did the job so well it eventually was no longer needed. Turning it off safely was the challenge.
August 1, 2014
"Liberated from LVAD support": One patient's story
The LVAD’s history of clinical performance and evolving technology puts it in a special category of devices whose usefulness continues to develop over time.
July 31, 2014
Stanford engineer invents safe way to transfer energy to medical chips in the body
A wireless system developed by Assistant Professor Ada Poon uses the same power as a cell phone to safely transmit energy to chips the size of a grain of rice. The technology paves the way for new "electroceutical" devices to treat illness or alleviate pain.
May 19, 2014
Seventh Annual Norman E. Shumway Visiting Professorship Lecture
“The Perfect Storm: The Affordable Care Act and Repeal of Sustainable Growth Rate Formula”
Presented by Jeffrey B. Rich, MD
May 9, 2014
Aortic Valve Replacement Without Open-Heart Surgery Gains Ground
TAVR (transcatheter aortic valve replacement) has emerged from the trend over the past three decades toward less invasive heart treatments — catheter-based procedures instead of open-chest surgery. The artificial tissue valve is a feat of engineering able to fold up into a fraction of its functional size. To get it inside the heart, it’s compressed and placed in the tip of a thin catheter, about as wide as a pen. This gets inserted into a blood vessel, usually an artery in the leg, then threaded up through the aorta and down into the heart. At the site of the diseased valve, the artificial valve is released from the delivery catheter and expanded with a balloon. This pushes open the damaged valve and lodges the bioprosthetic one within its cavity where it immediately starts opening and closing, allowing blood to leave the heart and preventing it from leaking back in.
Spring 2014
Easy Does It: Aortic Valve Replacement Without Open-Heart Surgery Gains Ground
TAVR has emerged from the trend over the past three decades toward less invasive heart treatments — catheter-based procedures instead of open-chest surgery. The artificial tissue valve is a feat of engineering able to fold up into a fraction of its functional size.
Spring 2014
Dear Dr. Shumway: A Boy, Two Frogs, and An Airmail Letter
The envelope was addressed in pencil, postmarked March 25, 1968, with 2 cents postage due, and was simply addressed: “Dr. Norman Shumway, Stanford, California.” For 45 years, it lay in the archives of Stanford medical center’s communications office, one document among thousands that intern Jerome Macalma was charged with scanning in the summer of 2013.
Spring 2014
Switching Course: Untangling A Birth Defect Decades Later
The challenge today is to ensure that post-surgical patients survive long enough to benefit from advances in care that are evolving as patients age. Surviving means receiving ongoing monitoring and care — which only about half of adolescent and adult patients currently receive — allowing doctors to intervene before patients suffer irreversible cardiac damage.
Spring 2014
Dean's Letter Spotlights CT Surgery's Pioneering History
Dr. Shumway didn’t like the limelight, but as he and his team performed the first successful human heart transplant in the United States, journalists climbed the walls of Stanford Hospital to try to catch a glimpse of the historic operation.
Spring 2014
2013: A Record-Setting Year for Heart Transplants at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford
With 19 heart transplants, 2013 was the busiest year ever for the Children’s Heart Center at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford, home to the only pediatric heart transplant program in Northern California. This success offers hope for those still waiting for this lifesaving gift.
January 16, 2014
Stanford patient benefits from total artificial heart
Mechanical support for failing hearts is not a new idea. Size, however, matters. In 1966, Michael DeBakey, MD, successfully implanted the first device to replace the pumping action on the left side of the heart. Now, at medical centers like Stanford, the LVAD, or left ventricular assist device, about 3 inches long, is a workhorse that enables many people with heart disease to live a normal life. Sure, if you have an LVAD implanted in your chest, you have to wear a power pack and a reserve power pack outside your body, but most find that burden acceptable. Your heart also remains in your body. If the whole heart is failing, that’s another matter.
2014