Margaret Allen

Last updated
Margaret Allen
Born1948
Alma mater Swarthmore College,
University of California, San Diego,
Oakland Medical Center
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon

Margaret Allen (born 1948) is an American cardiothoracic surgeon and an academic at the Benaroya Research Institute. She was the first woman to perform a heart transplant and is a former president of the United Network for Organ Sharing.

Contents

Early life

Allen was raised in Des Moines, Iowa, where she became interested in science at a young age. She would gather insects and things with her father and examine them under a microscope. He would also take her on science-like trips to further her interest in the sciences. [1] After high school, she completed an undergraduate degree in zoology at Swarthmore College. During summer breaks from Swarthmore, she worked in a high-altitude biology in Crested Butte, Colorado studying the nitrogen conserving abilities of different animals. [1] She originally planned to study physiology in graduate school but thought that a medical degree would provide her with more career options.

Higher education

In 1970, Allen enrolled at the University of California San Diego to become a Doctor of Medicine. [2] [3] From the various medical schools she could have attended, she decided upon UCSD because it was a brand new program that recruited professors from all over the country. [1] While in medical school, Allen worked in a vascular surgeon's lab who was implanting experimental hearts into cows. This was her first experience with cardiothoracic surgery. [1]

After graduating from medical school, Allen completed a five-year residency in general surgery at Oakland Medical Center (then the Kaiser Foundation Hospital) and a two-year residency in cardiothoracic surgery at King's College Hospital in London. While finishing her time in London, she was selected to complete a five-year residency program at Stanford University School of Medicine. Before doing so, Allen took a year to travel the world, spending six months in Papua New Guinea practicing in the hospital as a country-licensed physician. [1] After her six in Papua New Guinea, she returned to the U.S. to undertake the residency in cardiac surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine in 1982. [2] At Stanford, she trained under the tutelage of Norman Shumway, a pioneer in heart transplantation, [3] and became the first woman in the world to transplant a heart. [4] During her residency, Allen helped a neighbor graduate student with her linguistic project in which a gorilla taught her how to communicate in sign language. [1] At the end of her residency in 1985, Allen joined the surgical faculty of the University of Washington. [2]

Career

She founded the University of Washington Medical Center's heart transplant program, which was the first of its kind in the Pacific Northwest region, and was its director until 1996. [3] [5] She was awarded "Woman of the Year" by the International Women's Forum in 1990 and was named one of the "Best Doctors in America" for five consecutive years beginning in 1992. In 1994, she was elected national president of the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), the first woman to hold the position. [5] As president, she conducted an organ allocation analysis, reduced the time waiting for transplants, and increased awareness of organ donation in minority communities. In 1995, she shared the computerized technology of matching donated organs for transplant patients in Smithsonian Institution Computerworld Award in Medicine. [6] In 1996, the chief of surgery at UW removed Allen as transplant director. [7] Allen was appointed professor in the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the University of Washington in 1998. [5] In 2000, however, she settled a sex-discrimination suit with the university after having worked there for 25 years. [7] She received a settlement of $750,000 US dollars but was forced to resign from the cardiac transplant program and cease all of her research that has any tie to the University of Washington. [4] She was the medical director of the Hope Heart Institute, a public health charity, where she was involved in several programs to promote heart disease prevention. State Representative Jim McDermott nominated Allen as a Local Legend in 2003. [6] In 2004, the institute merged with the Benaroya Research Institute, where she became a member of the Hope Heart Matrix Biology Program. [3]

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 who regained full consciousness and was 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">William DeVries</span> American physician

William Castle DeVries is an American cardiothoracic surgeon, mainly known for the first transplant of a TAH using the Jarvik-7 model.

The Stanford University School of Medicine is the medical school of Stanford University and is located in Stanford, California, United States. It traces its roots to the Medical Department of the University of the Pacific, founded in San Francisco in 1858. This medical institution, then called Cooper Medical College, was acquired by Stanford in 1908. The medical school moved to the Stanford campus near Palo Alto, California, in 1959.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Denton Cooley</span> American heart and cardiothoracic surgeon (1920–2016)

Denton Arthur Cooley was an American cardiothoracic surgeon famous for performing the first implantation of a total artificial heart. Cooley was also the founder and surgeon in-chief of The Texas Heart Institute, chief of Cardiovascular Surgery at clinical partner Baylor St. Luke's Medical Center, consultant in Cardiovascular Surgery at Texas Children's Hospital and a clinical professor of Surgery at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cardiothoracic surgery</span> Medical specialty involved in surgical treatment of organs inside the thorax

Cardiothoracic surgery is the field of medicine involved in surgical treatment of organs inside the thoracic cavity — generally treatment of conditions of the heart, lungs, and other pleural or mediastinal structures.

Bruce A. Reitz is an American cardiothoracic surgeon, best known for leading the first combined heart-lung transplantation in 1981 with pioneer heart transplant surgeon Norman Shumway. He obtained an undergraduate degree at Stanford University a medical degree at Yale Medical School and completed an internship at Johns Hopkins Hospital (1971) and residencies and fellowships at Stanford University Hospital the National Institutes of Health (1974). He joined the surgical faculty at Stanford University (1978) then became chief of cardiac surgery at Johns Hopkins University (1982–92) and Chairman of the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Stanford (1992–2005). In 1995 he conducted another pioneering operation: the first Heartport procedure, using a device that allows minimally invasive coronary bypass and valve operations. Reitz also played a major role in the resident education program at Stanford, which he reorganized and maintained.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Randall B. Griepp</span> American cardiothoracic surgeon (1940–2022)

Randall Bertram Griepp was an American cardiothoracic surgeon who collaborated with Norman Shumway in the development of the first successful heart transplant procedures in the U.S. He had an international reputation for contributions to the surgical treatment of aortic aneurysms and aortic dissection and in heart and lung transplantations. He received nearly $8 million in grants from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lawrence H. Cohn</span> American-born pioneering cardiac surgeon, researcher, and medical educator

Lawrence H. Cohn, was an American-born pioneering cardiac surgeon, researcher, and medical educator. He had been on the surgical staff at Harvard Medical School since 1971 and had been a Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School since 1980. In 2000, he was awarded the first endowed Chair in Cardiac Surgery at Harvard Medical School.

Norman Edward Shumway was a pioneer of heart surgery at Stanford University. He was the 67th president of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery and the first to perform an adult human to human heart transplantation in the United States.

Richard Lee is a cardiac surgeon in St. Louis, Missouri, who helped pioneer a staged Hybrid Maze, a procedure for atrial fibrillation or AFIB. combining surgery and catheter based approaches.

Dr. Velma Scantlebury GCM also Velma Scantlebury-White is a Barbadian-born American transplant surgeon. She was the first Black woman transplant surgeon in the United States. She has received many honors in her career, having been named to both the "Best Doctors in America" and "Top Doctors in America" lists multiple times.

Rosalyn P. Scott is an American thoracic surgeon known for her work in education and for being the first African-American woman to become a thoracic surgeon.

John Charles Baldwin was an American cardiac surgeon and academic administrator. He served as the surgery department chairman at Baylor College of Medicine, as dean of Dartmouth College's Geisel School of Medicine, as president and CEO of the Harvard Immune Disease Institute, and as president of the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center.

Robert Samuel Decosta Higgins MD, MSHA is an American surgeon working with heart–lung transplants. He is president, Brigham and Women's Hospital; Executive Vice President, Mass General Brigham.

Abbas Ardehali is an Iranian-American cardiothoracic surgeon. He is the surgical director of UCLA's Heart, Lung, and Heart-Lung Transplant programs, and was the principal investigator behind technology that allows for the transportation of a breathing human heart or lung for an extended period of time.

<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.

Edward B. Stinson is an American retired cardiothoracic surgeon living in Los Altos, United States, who assisted Norman Shumway in America's first adult human-to-human heart transplantation on 6 January 1968 at Stanford University.

Jennifer Sue Lawton is an American cardiothoracic surgeon who specializes in adult cardiac surgery. She is the Richard Bennett Darnall Professor of Surgery and chief of the Johns Hopkins Division of Cardiac Surgery.

Dinee Collings Simpson is an American surgeon. She is an assistant professor of surgery in the Division of Organ Transplantation at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine and founding director of the Northwestern Medicine African American Transplant Access Program. As of 2019, she is the only female, African-American organ transplant surgeon in Chicago.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Business | Surgeon Of The Heart -- Tireless Dr. Margaret Allen Runs UW's Heart-Transplant Program | Seattle Times Newspaper". community.seattletimes.nwsource.com. Retrieved 2017-11-30.
  2. 1 2 3 King, Warren (June 25, 1995). "Surgeon Of The Heart – Tireless Dr. Margaret Allen Runs UW's Heart-Transplant Program". Seattle Times . Retrieved February 27, 2015.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "Margaret D. Allen MD, FACS, Dr Sc". Institute for Stem Cell & Regenerative Medicine, University of Washington . Retrieved February 27, 2015.
  4. 1 2 "Margaret Allen, MD, world's first female heart transplant surgeon, settles sex-discrimination suit with UW". Transplant News. July 14, 2000. Archived from the original on March 29, 2015. Retrieved February 27, 2015.
  5. 1 2 3 "Margaret Allen, M.D." United States National Library of Medicine . Retrieved February 27, 2015.
  6. 1 2 "biography - Margaret Allen, MD (Washington)". www.nlm.nih.gov.
  7. 1 2 "Top surgeon settles bias suit with UW". Seattle Times. Retrieved 2017-11-30.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.