First Title value, for Searching Shumacker, Harris B (1908 - 2009)

2024-05-13T12:33:01Z

by Sarah Gillam
Publication Date 2015-09-14 2018-07-04
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008000-E008099
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380235380235
Occupation Cardiac surgeon Cardiovascular surgeon General surgeon
Details Harris B Shumacker was chairman of the department of surgery at Indiana University and a pioneer of cardiovascular surgery. He was born on 20 May 1908 in Laurel, Mississippi, the son of Harris Blumenthal Shumacker and Corinne Selma Shumacker née Teller. He attended the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and Vanderbilt University, and completed his medical studies at Johns Hopkins University. He trained in surgery at Johns Hopkins under Alfred Blalock then, from 1936 to 1938, he was an instructor in surgery at Yale University. He subsequently moved back to Johns Hopkins, where he was an instructor from 1938 to 1941. In 1942, he joined the US Army and fought in the Pacific during the Second World War. Following his demobilisation in 1946, he became an associate professor at Yale. In 1948, he was appointed as the third chairman of the department of surgery at Indiana University's School of Medicine and served in that role until 1968. Here he established an internationally renowned department with a particular interest in cardiovascular surgery. After his retirement from Indiana University, he became a professor and special adviser at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, Maryland. He performed the first open heart surgeries in Indiana and worked to develop synthetic grafts for valve and blood vessel replacement. He described sympathectomy for frostbite and, with Harold King, was the first to describe post-splenectomy infection and sepsis. He also worked on the early development of the artificial heart. Shumacker was the author or co-author of nearly 600 papers and wrote 50 monographs or chapters in textbooks. He was either president or chairman of most of the leading surgical societies in the United States. In December 1933, he married Myrtle (known as 'Myrtie') E Landau. They had two sons, Peter and James, and six grandchildren. Myrtie died in 1992 and Shumacker married Grace. He died on 14 November 2009 at the age of 101.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008052
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Borst, Hans Georg (1927 - 2022)

2024-05-13T12:33:01Z

by Sarah Gillam
Publication Date 2022-10-13
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E010000-E010999/E010100-E010199
Occupation Cardiovascular surgeon Thoracic surgeon Cardiac surgeon Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Hans Georg Borst, head of the division of cardiothoracic and vascular surgery at Hannover Medical School, Germany was an internationally renowned cardiovascular surgeon who made major contributions to the surgical treatment of aortic aneurysm and aortic dissections, and to the development of cardiac transplantation. He was born on 17 October 1927 in Munich, the son of Max Borst, the influential chairman of pathology at Munich University, and Margarete Borst. Borst attended school in Munich until early 1945, when he joined the Luftwaffe and subsequently spent six months in a British prisoner of war camp. On his return home, he finished his schooling, taking his final examinations (abitur) at Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Bavaria in 1947. He then worked as a labourer on a construction site for six months, a prerequisite for matriculation at the faculty of medicine, Munich University. After finishing his pre-clinical training in Munich, he transferred to Harvard Medical School in 1950, entering the second-year class and graduating in 1953. He was an intern in Emile Holman’s department of surgery at Stanford Hospital in San Francisco and then, from 1954 to 1956, a fellow in the department of physiology at Harvard School of Public Health, working with James L Whittenberger, Stanley Sarnoff, Erik Berglund and Jeremiah ‘Jere’ Mead. Here he produced seven papers on the developing fields of invasive cardiology and cardiac surgery. In late 1956 he returned to Germany and joined Rudolf Zenker at Marburg University. He applied his knowledge of the pathophysiology of extracorporeal circulation and was responsible for setting up extracorporeal circulation for the first open-heart procedures performed in Germany. His research resulted in two experimental papers on the combined use of the heart lung machine and moderate as well as deep hypothermia. In 1958 he moved to Munich University, following Zenker, who had been appointed chair of surgery, and completed his general surgical as well as thoracic and cardiovascular residencies there. In 1962 Borst presented his dozenten thesis on ‘The combination of extracorporeal circulation and hypothermia’, which was honoured with the von Langenbeck prize by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Chirurgie (the Germany Society for Surgery). While completing his residences, his interest was focused on thoracic aortic aneurysm. In 1963 he was the first surgeon to operate on the aortic arch in deep hypothermia and circulatory arrest. His laboratory work at that time dealt with myocardial blood flow during assisted circulation and induced ventricular fibrillation. In April 1968 he was appointed chairman of the department of surgery at the newly founded medical school of Hannover, and in 1971 he became head of the division of thoracic and cardiovascular surgery there. During the succeeding years, Borst and his department focused on several research topics, including: the consequences of temporary coronary occlusion; the effect of collateral blood flow in conjunction with cardioplegia; coronary and cerebral air embolism; the use of fibrin adhesive in thoracic and cardiovascular surgery; studies of the spinal cord during aortic cross clamping; and the preservation of the heart and lung in conjunction with transplantation. At Hannover he developed a large-scale operative programme in thoracic and cardiovascular surgery. Aside from the by then conventional surgery for valve and coronary heart disease, he and his department published extensively on: oesophagectomy for carcinoma of the oesophagus; thoracic aneurysms, especially new technologies in arch surgery; total correction of congenital anomalies in infancy; antiarrhythmic surgery; and clinical heart, heart lung and lung transplantation. In 1983 he and his colleagues introduced the ‘elephant trunk’ technique, a surgical aortic replacement for patients suffering from extensive aortic diseases. The technique helped to reduced complications during the repair of aortic aneurysms by performing a staged procedure. He was a founding member of the Deutschen Gesellschaft für Thorax-, Herz- und Gefäßchirurgie (the German Society for Thoracic, Cardiac and Vascular Surgery) and cofounded the European Association for Cardiothoracic Surgery (EACTS). The EACTS Hans G Borst award for thoracic aortic surgery is named in his honour. From 1978 to 1987 he was editor of *Thoraxchirurgie*. Under his leadership the journal was renamed *The Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgeon*, was published in English and expanded to include cardiac surgery. In 1987 he was appointed as the founder editor of *The European Journal of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery*, the official journal of EACTS. He wrote more than 400 peer-reviewed papers and contributed to nearly 50 books. He was a member of many international associations and societies, including the British Cardiac Society, the Cardiothoracic Society (Pete’s Club, London), the Sociedad de Cardiocirujanos, Spain, the Société de Chirurgie Thoracique et Cardio-Vasculaire de Langue Française, the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, the American Surgical Association, the International Society for Cardiovascular Surgery and the International Society for Heart Transplantation. In 1987 he received the Erich Lexer prize of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Chirurgie for his work on cardiac transplantation. He became an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1989. Borst was married to Petra Angelika. They had four children – Mathias, Verena, Stefanie and Valerie – and nine grandchildren. Borst died on 8 September 2022. He was 94.
Resource Identifier RCS: E010163
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

Search Results for Medical Obituaries - Narrowed by: Cardiovascular surgeon - Cardiac surgeon

First Title value, for Searching Shumacker, Harris B (1908 - 2009)

First Title value, for Searching Borst, Hans Georg (1927 - 2022)