Dr. Helen Brooke Taussig - Changing the Face of Medicine
|
|
| Audience/Grade: | College Freshman - Continuing Education |
| Discipline(s): |
Bioengineering and Biomedical Engineering |
| Special Topic(s): |
History of Technology |
| Learning Resource Type: | Community - Award/Recognition/Scholarship |
| Media Type: | WWW |
| Author(s): | National Institute of Health - NIH |
| Description: | Biography maintained by the National Institute of Health(NIH) as part of a series on Women who changed the face of medicine. "Helen Brooke Taussig is known as the founder of pediatric cardiology for her innovative work on "blue baby" syndrome. In 1944, Taussig, surgeon Alfred Blalock, and surgical technician Vivien Thomas developed an operation to correct the congenital heart defect that causes the syndrome. Since then, their operation has prolonged thousands of lives, and is considered a key step in the development of adult open heart surgery the following decade. She earned a B.A. degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1921, and after studying at Harvard Medical School and Boston University she transferred to Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine to pursue her interest in cardiac research. Taussig graduated from Hopkins in 1927, and served as a fellow in cardiology at Johns Hopkins Hospital for the next year, followed by a two-year pediatrics internship. In 1930 she was appointed head of the Children's Heart Clinic at the Johns Hopkins Hospital pediatric unit, the Harriet Lane Home. By the time Taussig graduated from Hopkins, she had lost her hearing and relied on lip-reading and hearing aids for the rest of her career. Some of her innovations in pediatric cardiology have been attributed to her ability to distinguish the rhythms of normal and damaged hearts by touch, rather than by sound. Anoxemia or "blue baby" syndrome, the congenital heart condition which Taussig specialized in, is caused by a defect that prevents the heart from receiving enough oxygen. Taussig used fluoroscopy, a new x-ray technique, to establish that babies suffering from anoxemia had a leaking septum (the wall that separates the chambers of the heart), and an underdeveloped artery leading from the heart to the lungs. In 1941 Taussig suggested an idea for an operation that might help children with "blue baby" to her colleagues at Hopkins—surgeon Alfred Blalock and surgical technician Vivien Thomas. On November 9, 1944 Taussig and Blalock first performed this new operation on a child with anoxemia, (after Thomas had experimented extensively with the procedure). The technique was named the Blalock-Taussig operation, and was soon used worldwide. Taussig continued her research on cardiac birth defects and published her important work Congenital Malformations of the Heart, in 1947. In 1954 Helen Taussig received the prestigious Lasker Award for her work on the blue baby operation, and in 1959 she was awarded a full professorship at Johns Hopkins University, one of the first women in the history of the school to hold that rank. A founder of the subspecialty of pediatric cardiology, Taussig was elected president of the American Heart Association in 1965, and was the first woman recipient of the highest award given by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. In 1964 Taussig received the Medal of Freedom from President Lyndon Johnson." |
| Rating: |
  |
| Related Resources | |
| Keywords: | gender equity, women in medicine, female role model, surgery, heart surgery |
| Is Component of |
Changing the face of Medicine - Celebrating America's Women Physicians |
| Usage Tip | |
| Related ABET Criteria: |
(h) Understand global, economic, environmental, and societal context |
| Use of Resource: | hitory of technology, women role model |
| Difficulty: | Medium |
| Interactivity Level: | Very Low |
| Version Info | |
| Publication Date: | November 2007 |
| Platform/Format: | WWW |
| Cost: | Free |
| Download URL: | http://www.nlm.nih... |
| Metadata: | IEEE LOM Record |
| Collection: |
NEEDS
|
