Norman E. Shumway
Feb. 10, 1923-Feb. 10, 2006
Palo Alto, California

Pioneering heart-transplant surgeon Dr. Norman E. Shumway died Feb. 10, 2006, at his Palo Alto home, one day after reaching his 83rd birthday. He died of complications from cancer.

Shumway led a Stanford medical team that performed the first human heart transplant in the United States on Jan. 6, 1968.

Born in Kalamazoo, Mich., in 1923 and raised in Jackson, Mich., he briefly studied pre-law at the University of Michigan before joining the army in World War II. During this time, he received medical training and then enrolled in medical school at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, from which he graduated in 1949.

While in residency at the University of Minnesota under surgeon Dr. Owen Wangensteen, Shumway researched the effects of hypothermia on the heart. He studied the ventricular-fibrillation threshold, showing that as the temperature fell, less current was needed to cause the heart to fibrillate.

After receiving his doctorate in cardiovascular surgery in 1956, Shumway briefly worked in private clinical practice before returning to an academic environment. He came to Stanford in 1958 as an instructor in surgery.

Among Shumway's research projects, he and his first resident, Dr. Richard Lower, used a procedure called topical hypothermia using ice-cold saline to slow down the heart, cross-clamping the aorta so that no blood was flowing through the coronary arteries.

With the ability to put the heart into cardiac arrest for a relatively long period of time, the pair realized they could possibly transplant a heart. Shumway's hypothermia experiments led to the first successful animal heart-transplant operation in a dog in 1959. The dog survived eight days.

On Jan. 6, 1968, Shumway performed the first heart transplant at Stanford on 54-year-old steelworker Mike Kasperak. To Shumway's chagrin, the procedure attracted worldwide media attention, with journalists climbing the walls of the hospital to try to get a peek into the operating room.

Years later, Shumway said of the transplant: "We put in the heart and nothing happened. There were slow waves on the EKG and then the heart began beating stronger and then exuberance.... We knew we would be okay."

The Stanford transplant came four weeks after the first such operation in the world, by Dr. Christian Barnard, in South Africa. Barnard used techniques developed by Shumway and Lower at Stanford.

The high mortality rate,however, discouraged many hospitals from pursuing the surgery.

"Many people gave it up when they thought it was too difficult, but Dr. Shumway had the persistence and vision that it could work," said Dr. Bruce Reitz, Stanford professor of cardiothoracic surgery. "His determination to make heart transplantation work was absolutely crucial." Nearly 60,000 Americans have had heart transplants over the years, including 1,240 at Stanford. Shumway himself oversaw more than 800 transplants.

In 1981, Shumway and Reitz performed the world's first successful combined heart-lung transplant in 45-year-old advertising executive Mary Gohlke, who lived five more years and wrote a book about her experiences. By the late 1980s, they were transplanting hearts into infants as well.

Shumway, speaking at a 2003 gathering of transplant patients to help celebrate his 80th birthday, said it was "gratifying to see the changes that have made this (heart transplant) an almost ordinary experience."

He also praised the former patients saying they were "the real heroes ... so marvelous, so strong, so courageous." Shumway held the post of chief of the division of cardiothoracic surgery at Stanford starting in 1965 and in 1974, he negotiated the creation of a separate Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, which he chaired until his retirement in 1993.

Throughout his career, he was involved with improving the heart-transplantation procedure, developing new ways of preventing rejection of the transplant after surgery and better methods for keeping donated hearts fresh. Shumway's other major medical achievements included such open-heart surgery as the transplantation of valves.

Shumway was one of the "true pioneers in cardiac surgery," said Dr. Philip Pizzo, dean of the Stanford School of Medicine. "He developed one of the world's most distinguished departments in cardiothoracic surgery at Stanford, trained leaders who now guide this field throughout the world and created a record of accomplishment that few will ever rival. His impact will be long-lived and his name long-remembered. We will miss Norm Shumway and the dignity and excellence that he brought to medicine and surgery -- and to Stanford."

Over the years, Shumway received dozens of honors and awards. In 1980, he was named Honorary President for Life by the International Society of Heart and Lung Transplantation. In 1998, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from this organization. He also has received the Scientific Achievement Award from the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, the American Surgical Association, and the American Medical Association, as well as the Trustees Medal for Distinguished Achievement from Massachusetts General Hospital, to name a few.

Outside of medicine, Shumway loved golf. He competed in the Pro-Am AT&T tournament at Pebble Beach in 1993, and this was the highlight of his golfing career.

He was surrounded by family when he passed away.

He is survived by his former wife, Mary Lou, of Palo Alto; four children, Sara, Lisa, Amy and Michael; and two grandchildren.

Tags: veteran, teacher/educator, public service