September 2012 Vol. 13, No. 7
|
50 years of excellence
Did
you know it's the 50th anniversary of The Beatles first single? A
couple of months ago, during my usual YouTube exploration, I bumped into
"Yesterday" being performed by Adam Levine from Maroon 5. I couldn't help but
search for the original. I absolutely fell in love with it. My parents are from
India and I grew up in the Middle East so was never really exposed to great
Western musicians and bands. Rather, my childhood memories are of the old,
classic '60s-'80s Hindi music and even some popular Arabic songs. My first
recollections of Western music are West Life's "My Love" and 'N Sync's "Bye Bye
Bye" when I was around 14 years old. From there I jumped onto Backstreet Boys,
Michael Buble, John Mayer, Adele and so on. [Photo of The Cavern Club in Liverpool where The Beatles played gigs in the early days (flickr user Victoriapeckham).]
As Texas Heart Institute celebrates
50 years of excellence, I am reminded there is always so much to learn and
discover … every single day.
Read
on for more reflections on the Texas Heart Institute's 50 years of commitment
to patient care, education, and research. — Christina
|
|
50 years of innovative patient care
About a year ago, my uncle,
in his mid-seventies, suffered a stroke. Growing up, I felt very close to him,
even though he lived in Dallas and I lived in San Antonio. We've always had a
special bond because we both love old books and poetry. When my mother called
to tell me about his stroke I was shocked. Naïve and oblivious, I never thought
something like that would happen to someone close to me. It's a scary thing to
have someone you love go through that. He now lives with a pacemaker and a new
sense of his own mortality. I am thankful every day
for the surgeons and other professionals who dedicate their lives to treating
and researching heart disease. It is thanks to them that procedures and devices
have advanced to what they are today, allowing my uncle to survive. — Rebecca
P.S. If you're interested
in books about defibrillators, pacemakers, or other heart devices, we have a
great selection, including the most recent Medical Device Register.
  
|
|
50 years of cutting-edge research
The
professional staff at THI averages over 30 papers a month. I enjoy looking at recent
publications and can tell you they reflect the full range of cutting-edge research,
from basic research to clinical trials. I was curious to know what the publication
record said about THI's accomplishments over the past 50 years. I pulled the
records for over 3,000 first-author publications in MEDLINE and collected the
Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). The resulting word cloud shows the topics important
to THI with word size roughly representing the number of times it was used. Heart-assist
devices and heart transplantation are the two biggest. If you look closely,
you'll also see terms like coronary vessel anomalies, mitral valve, Texas, and
cattle. For detailed citations, you can browse or search published research
from the past five years in our database of Texas Heart Institute Professional
Staff Publications http://txhrt.org/profstaffpubs
— Sonya
|
|
50 years of education and mentoring
 Dr. Alfred Blalock (1899-1964) was best known for his research on shock and for developing,
with Dr. Helen Taussig, the Blalock-Taussig Shunt, a surgical procedure for
correcting "blue baby syndrome," a congenital heart defect in infants. That development ushered in the modern era of
cardiac surgery and Dr. Cooley, as an intern at Johns
Hopkins in Baltimore, assisted Dr. Blalock with
the first of these operations. Dr. Blalock's influence, work, and research inspired Dr.
Cooley to specialize in heart surgery. After founding the Texas Heart Institute, dedicated to treating heart
disease and training new heart specialists, Dr. Cooley recognized his surgical teacher and mentor by dedicating
the library in THI's new 28-story tower to Dr.
Blalock. Although the library no longer bears his name, Dr.
Blalock's memory lives on in a collection of his papers and letters, housed in the library's archives. — Gregg
P.S. Read more about THI's history as told by Dr. Cooley himself: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2565532/.
|
Library & Learning Resource Center
Fall Classes - Register now
Sonya Fogg, Manager ♦ Rebecca Ajtai, Coordinator of Library Services
Gregg Doty, Library Assistant ♦ Christina Senny, Student Worker
Dr. Patrick J. Hogan, Director
L&LRC Hours ♦ Mon. through Fri. ♦ 7:30 am - 5 pm
www.texasheart.org/library ♦ 832-355-9560
Reference the previous issue of L&LRC E-news here.
Subscribe to receive each issue by e-mail. Your privacy is protected
and you may unsubscribe at any time. |
|
Share
