50 Years of Transforming Lives: The History and Future of Heart Transplant at Stanford

In 1968, the very concept of transplanting a beating heart from one human to another seemed like science fiction. A visionary Stanford cardiothoracic surgeon named Dr. Norman E. Shumway set about to change that; and in the process created the standard by which nearly 2,000 life-saving surgeries are performed annually today. However Shumway’s legacy is cemented not only for those three hours of surgery in January 1968, but in his team’s decades-long commitment to further transforming transplant protocols and the translational science to lower patient rejection and increase survival rate.
Led by Dr. Joseph Woo, the current chair of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Stanford, this remarkable session featured insights from several pioneering leaders in the field who were trainees on Dr. Shumway’s team. The panelists also explored the impact of this historic innovation at Stanford on human health and the extraordinary new directions in cardiovascular medicine that Stanford is leading today.