Heather J. Ross

Last updated
Heather J. Ross
Born
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Known for Heart Failure, Heart Transplantation, Test Your Limits
AwardsMember, Order of Canada

CCS Women in Cardiovascular Medicine/Science Mentorship Award, Canadian Heart Failure Society Annual Achievement Award. Canadian Medical Hall of Fame,

ESC Inspirational Career Lecture, European Society of Cardiology.

Contents

Academic work
Discipline Women in Cardiology
Institutions University of Toronto

Heather Joan Ross is professor of medicine at the University of Toronto in Ontario, Canada. [1] Ross is a scientific lead for the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research, the director of the Ted Rogers Centre of Excellence in Heart Function and Director of the Cardiac Transplant Program at Toronto General Hospital. [2] She has been the president of the Canadian Cardiovascular Society [3] and the Canadian Society of Transplantation. [4]

Education and early life

Ross was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. At age 11, she did a 100 km bicycle trip and since has been a parachutist, a mountain biker, a rock-climber, a skier and a triathlete. [5] [6] She credits her grandfather and patients for motivating her to exercise and coined the slogan "your life is worth one hour a day". [5] [7] After attending Queen's University for an undergraduate degree in biology, she went to the University of British Columbia for her medical degree and Dalhousie University for her specialization in cardiology. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in heart failure/heart transplantation at Stanford University. In addition, she studied bioethics, obtaining a master's degree at the University of Toronto. [1]

Ross is a multi-instrumentalist, learning to play the saxophone, guitar and harmonica at a young age. She is currently the lead vocalist of an R&B band called "The Marginal Donors". [8] [9] The band includes two of University Health Network's transplant surgeons, Dr. Mark Cattral and Dr. Paul Greig. [10]

Career

Ross began her career in 1996 at Toronto General Hospital's Peter Munk Cardiac Centre. By 2018, she was involved in the care of over 500 patients undergoing heart transplantation. [11] Ross specializes in issues related to end-of-life in patients with advanced heart failure, targeting gaps in end-of-life care. In 2006, Ross founded Test Your Limits, an organization that has raised over 2.5 million dollars for heart failure research and included expeditions to Antarctica (2006), Nepal (2008), North Pole (2010), South Pole (2013), Bhutan (2014), Nahanni (2015) and Tibet (2017). [12] She is the recipient of the Order of Canada(2021), [13] and the inaugural CCS Women in Cardiovascular Medicine/Science Mentorship Award. [14]

Research interests

Ross has authored over 340 peer-reviewed publications with an interest in end-of-life care, mobile health and outcomes in patients with advanced heart failure and heart transplantation. [15]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christiaan Barnard</span> South African cardiac surgeon (1922–2001)

Christiaan Neethling Barnard was a South African cardiac surgeon who performed the world's first human-to-human heart transplant operation. On 3 December 1967, Barnard transplanted the heart of accident victim Denise Darvall into the chest of 54-year-old Louis Washkansky, with Washkansky regaining full consciousness and being able to talk easily with his wife, before dying eighteen days later of pneumonia, largely brought on by the anti-rejection drugs that suppressed his immune system. Barnard had told Mr. and Mrs. Washkansky that the operation had an 80% chance of success, an assessment which has been criticised as misleading. Barnard's second transplant patient, Philip Blaiberg, whose operation was performed at the beginning of 1968, returned home from the hospital and lived for a year and a half.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Heart failure</span> Failure of the heart to provide sufficient blood flow

Heart failure (HF), also known as congestive heart failure (CHF), is a syndrome, a group of signs and symptoms, caused by an impairment of the heart's blood pumping function. Symptoms typically include shortness of breath, excessive fatigue, and leg swelling. The shortness of breath may occur with exertion or while lying down, and may wake people up during the night. Chest pain, including angina, is not usually caused by heart failure, but may occur if the heart failure was caused by a heart attack. The severity of the heart failure is mainly decided based on ejection fraction and also measured by the severity of symptoms. Other conditions that may have symptoms similar to heart failure include obesity, kidney failure, liver disease, anemia, and thyroid disease.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ottawa Civic Hospital</span> Hospital in Ottawa, Ontario

The Ottawa Civic Hospital is one of three main campuses of The Ottawa Hospital – along with the General and Riverside campuses. With 549 beds, the Civic Campus has the region's only adult-care trauma centre, serving Eastern Ontario, the Outaouais region of Quebec and eastern Nunavut. The Civic Campus also houses the University of Ottawa Heart Institute, which provides cardiac care for patients at The Ottawa Hospital. The Civic Campus opened in 1924 and is located at 1053 Carling Avenue in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">University of Ottawa Heart Institute</span> Hospital in Ottawa, Ontario

The University of Ottawa Heart Institute (UOHI) (French: Institut de cardiologie de l'Université d'Ottawa ) is Canada's largest cardiovascular health centre. It is located in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It began as a department in The Ottawa Hospital, and since has evolved into Canada's only complete cardiac centre, encompassing prevention, diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation, research, and education.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Toronto General Hospital</span> Hospital in Toronto, Ontario

The Toronto General Hospital (TGH) is a major teaching hospital in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and the flagship campus of University Health Network (UHN). It is located in the Discovery District of Downtown Toronto along University Avenue's Hospital Row; it is directly north of The Hospital for Sick Children, across Gerrard Street West, and east of Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and Mount Sinai Hospital. The hospital serves as a teaching hospital for the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine. In 2019, the hospital was ranked first for research in Canada by Research Infosource for the ninth consecutive year.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Magdi Yacoub</span> Egyptian retired professor and surgeon (born 1935)

Sir Magdi Habib Yacoub, is an Egyptian retired professor of cardiothoracic surgery at Imperial College London, best known for his early work in repairing heart valves with surgeon Donald Ross, adapting the Ross procedure, where the diseased aortic valve is replaced with the person's own pulmonary valve, devising the arterial switch operation (ASO) in transposition of the great arteries, and establishing the heart transplantation centre at Harefield Hospital in 1980 with a heart transplant for Derrick Morris, who at the time of his death was Europe's longest-surviving heart transplant recipient. Yacoub subsequently performed the UK's first combined heart and lung transplant in 1983.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lung transplantation</span> Surgical procedure in which a patients diseased lungs are partially or totally replaced

Lung transplantation, or pulmonary transplantation, is a surgical procedure in which one or both lungs are replaced by lungs from a donor. Donor lungs can be retrieved from a living or deceased donor. A living donor can only donate one lung lobe. With some lung diseases, a recipient may only need to receive a single lung. With other lung diseases such as cystic fibrosis, it is imperative that a recipient receive two lungs. While lung transplants carry certain associated risks, they can also extend life expectancy and enhance the quality of life for those with end stage pulmonary disease.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre</span> Hospital in Ontario, Canada

Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre (SHSC), commonly known as Sunnybrook Hospital or simply Sunnybrook, is an academic health science centre located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is the largest trauma centre in Canada and one of two trauma centres in Toronto, the other being St. Michael's Hospital. Sunnybrook is a teaching hospital fully affiliated with the University of Toronto. The hospital is home to Canada's largest veterans centre, in the Kilgour Wing and the George Hees, which cares for World War II and Korean War veterans.

The Canadian Cardiovascular Society (CCS) is the national voice for cardiovascular physicians and scientists in Canada. The CCS is a membership organization that represents more than 1,800 professionals in the cardiovascular field. Its mission is to promote cardiovascular health and care through knowledge translation, professional development and leadership in health policy.

Sean Patrick Pinney is an American cardiologist and the Director of both the Advanced Heart Failure and Cardiac Transplant Program and the Pulmonary Hypertension Program at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Heart transplantation</span> Surgical transplant procedure

A heart transplant, or a cardiac transplant, is a surgical transplant procedure performed on patients with end-stage heart failure or severe coronary artery disease when other medical or surgical treatments have failed. As of 2018, the most common procedure is to take a functioning heart, with or without both lungs, from a recently deceased organ donor and implant it into the patient. The patient's own heart is either removed and replaced with the donor heart or, much less commonly, the recipient's diseased heart is left in place to support the donor heart.

The Canadian Cardiovascular Societygrading of angina pectoris is a classification system used to grade the severity of exertional angina.

Vivek Rao is a Canadian cardiac surgeon and researcher. He was the youngest faculty member ever to join the University of Toronto cardiac surgery division, and, later, the second youngest chief of cardiac surgery ever appointed at the University Health Network Division of Cardiac Surgery.

Sharon Ann Hunt is a cardiology professor and Director of the Post Heart Transplant Programme in Palo Alto, California and is affiliated with Stanford University Medical Center, professionally known for her work in the care of patients after heart transplantation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Margaret Billingham</span> Kenyan-born American pathologist (1930-2009)

Margaret E. Billingham was a pathologist at Stanford University Medical Center, who made significant achievements in the early recognition and grading of transplant rejection following cardiac transplantation, known as 'Billingham's Criteria'. She also described chronic rejection and techniques in heart endomyocardial biopsy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stuart W. Jamieson</span> British surgeon

Stuart William Jamieson is a British cardiothoracic surgeon, specialising in pulmonary thromboendarterectomy (PTE), a surgical procedure performed to remove organized clotted blood (thrombus) from pulmonary arteries in people with chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH).

Jack Greene Copeland is an American cardiothoracic surgeon, who has established procedures in heart transplantation including repeat heart transplantation, the implantation of total artificial hearts (TAH) to bridge the time to heart transplant, innovations in left ventricular assist devices (LVAD) and the technique of "piggybacking" a second heart in a person, while leaving them the original.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael L. Hess</span>

Michael L. Hess was an American professor of cardiology and physiology at the Medical College of Virginia (MCV) who was instrumental in founding the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation (ISHLT), of which he served as its first president.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cardiac allograft vasculopathy</span> Medical condition

Cardiac allograft vasculopathy (CAV) is a progressive type of coronary artery disease in people who have had a heart transplant. As the donor heart has lost its nerve supply there is typically no chest pain, and CAV is usually detected on routine testing. It may present with symptoms such as tiredness and breathlessness.

Jillianne Reay Code is a Canadian researcher and learning scientist. She is an associate professor in the faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia and director of the Assessment for Learning in Immersion and Virtual Environments (ALIVE) research lab.

References

  1. 1 2 "Heather Ross |". ims.utoronto.ca. Retrieved 2018-01-23.
  2. "University of Toronto Faculty".
  3. Kells, Cathy. "CCS President's Message". Canadian Cardiovascular Society . Retrieved 2018-01-23.
  4. "CST Past Presidents". Canadian Society of Transplantation . Retrieved 2018-01-23.
  5. 1 2 "Physician's heart-healthy prescription: Exercise addiction" . Retrieved 2018-01-23.
  6. "Canada's greatest modern women explorers". Canadian Geographic. 2016-02-10. Retrieved 2018-01-24.
  7. "Is Your Life Worth One Hour A Day?". Personal Health News. Retrieved 2018-01-23.
  8. Smith, Michael (2006-01-17). "Transplant doctor climbs mountains". CNN . Retrieved 2018-01-23.
  9. "Toronto's 30 Best Doctors". Toronto Life. 2014-03-05. Retrieved 2018-01-24.
  10. "5th International Pub Night - Fresh Print Magazine". Fresh Print Magazine. 2014-04-25. Retrieved 2018-01-24.
  11. "Paving the way to truly mend a broken (donor) heart in the future". www.uhn.ca. Retrieved 2018-01-23.
  12. "Test Your Limits". tgwhfonline.ca. Retrieved 2018-01-24.
  13. "The names and citations of the new members of the Order of Canada". Toronto Star . 30 December 2020.
  14. https://twitter.com/pmunkcardiacctr/status/1319341341118287875?lang=en.{{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  15. pubmeddev. "heather ross - PubMed - NCBI". www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Retrieved 2021-03-12.