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.
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.
O. H. "Bud" Frazier is a heart surgeon and director of cardiovascular surgery research at the Texas Heart Institute (THI), best known for his work in mechanical circulatory support (MCS) of failing hearts using left ventricular assist devices (LVAD) and total artificial hearts (TAH).
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.
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.
James K. Kirklin is an American cardiac surgeon who has made significant scientific and surgical contributions in the fields of heart transplantation and mechanical circulatory support devices to assist the pumping action of the heart. He was formerly Professor of Surgery (1987-2022), Director of the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery (2006-2016), Director of the James and John Kirklin Institute for Research in Surgical Outcomes (KIRSO) (2016–2022), and Co-Director of Comprehensive Cardiovascular Center (2011-2017) at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). While at UAB, he held the UAB Cardiovascular Research Chair (1998-2006), the John Kirklin Chair of Cardiovascular Surgery (2006-2017), and the James Kirklin Chair of Cardiothoracic Surgery (2017-2022).
Mandeep R. Mehra is The William Harvey Distinguished Chair in Advanced Cardiovascular Medicine and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is the medical director of the Brigham Heart and Vascular Center in Boston, Massachusetts, and specializes in advanced heart failure, mechanical circulatory support and cardiac transplantation.
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.
Philip Caves (1940–1978) was an Irish cardiothoracic surgeon. In 1972, while at Stanford University, he pioneered the use of the bioptome and transvenous endomyocardial biopsy in the early diagnosis of heart transplant rejection. It was considered the most significant advance in antirejection therapy of the time. Awarded the British American Research Fellowship in 1971, Caves worked with pioneering cardiothoracic surgeon Norman Shumway at Stanford and became staff surgeon leading the transplant programme by 1973. A year later he went to Edinburgh as a senior lecturer in cardiac surgery, where he became particularly interested in pediatric cardiac surgery.
The International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation (ISHLT), established in 1981, is a professional organization committed to research and education in heart and lung disease and transplantation. It holds annual scientific meetings and publishes The Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation. It also holds the worlds largest registry of heart and lung transplant data.
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.
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.
John Wallwork CBE FRCS FMedSci, is a retired cardiothoracic surgeon and emeritus professor who performed Europe's first successful combined heart-lung transplant in 1984, and in 1986 performed the world's first heart-lung and liver transplant with Sir Roy Calne.
Eric A. Rose is an American cardiothoracic surgeon, scientist, entrepreneur and professor and Chairman of the Department of Population Health Science & Policy, and Associate Director for Clinical Outcomes at Mount Sinai Heart. He is best known for performing the first successful paediatric heart transplant, in 1984 while at NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital (NYP).
Keith Reemtsma was an American transplant surgeon, best known for the cross-species kidney transplantation operation from chimpanzee to human in 1964. With only the early immunosuppressants and no long-term dialysis, the female recipient survived nine months, long enough to return to work.
William Baumgartner is professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and executive director of the American Board of Thoracic Surgery. He is known for his work in neurological protection during cardiac surgery. He was president of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation for 1996–1997.
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.
Mario Chih-Hsiung Karl Deng is a German-Chinese cardiologist specialized in the care of patients with advanced heart failure. Deng is a Professor of Medicine in the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles.
