HEART BEAT: Norman Edward Shumway, a quiet, gentle and reserved man, died on February 10th last. He was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan in 1923 and served in the US Army, where apparently an aptitude test suggested that he might consider medicine as a career.
He qualified MD from Vanderbilt University in 1949 and was lucky and clever enough to obtain a post in the University of Minnesota with the great cardiac surgical pioneer C. Walton Lillehei.
From his earliest involvement in cardiac surgery, Dr Shumway was research orientated. There were enormous opportunities in a rapidly developing field. He took a particular interest in the techniques of hypothermia (lowering body temperature) to protect vital organs, particularly the brain and spinal cord during periods in which the circulation was either reduced or stopped. However, it was for his early seminal work on heart transplantation that he became best known. Together with his colleague, Dick Lower, they developed the technique of heart transplantation that basically is still in use today. A fellow researcher in Minnesota, one Christiaan Barnard, watched these developments with considerable interest.
Norman Shumway had planned to do at least 10 cases before releasing any results. It was not to be. In December 1967, Dr Barnard performed the first human cardiac transplant in Capetown. Media interest throughout the world was intense and reluctantly the quiet Dr Shumway stepped forward and performed the first such operation in the US, one month later. Being the man, scholar and surgeon that he was, he did not show any anger that he had been pre-empted or that his pioneering work had been used without reference. He felt it was all for the benefit of the patient and that individual honours counted little.
Subsequent to these early operations, cardiac surgical units throughout the world performed the operation in a blaze of publicity. The results proved very disappointing because of tissue rejection and also because of the side effects of the drugs used in its treatment. The results became unacceptable in the cardiac surgical community and the operations ceased.
Except for one unit and one dogged, persevering surgeon who refused to abandon the group of cardiac patients for whom there was no other hope.
In the early 1980s the drug Cyclosporine was developed and proved to be a highly successful immunosuppressive tool. Dr Shumway led the way into the modern era of heart, lung and heart-lung transplantation. His colleague Bruce Reitz performed the first heart lung transplant in 1981.
Our unit in Dublin started work in 1985 and has worked steadily ever since, first hearts then lungs, limited only by organ availability and investment. Such investment was promised in 2001 when Mr Cowen was Minister for Health. Does all this sound familiar?
Everybody who visited Dr Shumway at Stanford University, as I did, came away informed, impressed and enthused by the sheer professionalism and expertise of his unit and of his distinguished colleagues. His quiet unassuming work and teaching has helped thousands of patients throughout the world and so does to this day.
He was a keen although not expert golfer. On his visit to Dublin we brought him to play at the magnificent European Club links at Brittas Bay. He was delighted by the day. I suspect more so than the honour bestowed upon him by the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. That day I remember very well as I had to leave to go to the Mater hospital to deal with a dissecting aortic aneurysm. Typically Dr Shumway volunteered to go with me.
You have all heard of Christiaan Barnard. I suspect few of you have heard of Norman Shumway. Who remembers who comes second in this media-driven world? In the real world, however, Dr Norman Edward Shumway, pioneer, teacher, surgeon and friend; you are incomparably first. May you rest in peace and honour.
I had intended to write about other things, as indeed much has been stirring in the medical world in the past few weeks. I am assuming that the utterances of the Minister of Trolleys at her party conference were just the usual effusions of hot air designed to buoy up the party faithful lest they sink without trace. Having become a smoke-free, plastic bag-free, hospital bed-free society; we are apparently shortly to become income tax free. I hadn't noticed that we were a low tax society and I suspect that most of you hadn't either. Indeed the OECD, used by the Minister to lambaste the hospital consultants, reckons that we have among the highest rates of indirect taxation in the world. Please don't insult our intelligence with this low tax nonsense.
This brings me to our bin. We live in a little cul-de-sac and just once in the past six weeks has our bin been collected. We pay for this service but it doesn't happen. Other people don't pay and it does happen. We complained about public health, rats, plague etc and were told that they would look into it and get back to us.
You wouldn't want to hold your breath. It appears that this little stealth tax is exacted with bugger all being given in return. Good on you, Dún Laoghaire and Rathdown Council, maybe you should run the whole country.
Maurice Neligan is a cardiac surgeon.