Richard Rowland Lower (August 15, 1929 – May 17, 2008) was an American pioneer of cardiac surgery, particularly in the field of

heart transplantation A heart transplant, or a cardiac transplant, is a surgical transplant procedure performed on patients with end-stage heart failure or severe coronary artery disease when other medical or surgical treatments have failed. , the most common procedu ...

.Pincock, S. (2008)
"Richard Rowland Lower"
''The Lancet'', 372(9640), 712 EP–. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(08)61294-5. Retrieved May 25, 2013 Lower was born in Detroit, attended

Amherst College Amherst College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. Founded in 1821 as an attempt to relocate Williams College by its then-president Zephaniah Swift Moore, Amherst is the third oldest institution of higher educati ...

, and received his medical degree from

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

in 1955.Pearce, J. (May 31, 2008)
"Richard Lower Dies at 78; Transplanted Animal and Human Hearts"
''The New York Times''. Retrieved May 25, 2013. Lower and Norman Shumway developed many of the techniques required to conduct successful heart transplantation, including the use of hypothermia and the orthotopic technique, McRae, D. (2007). ''Every Second Counts''. New York. which became the standard technique for cardiac transplantation. Initially experimenting on dogs, Lower and Shumway conducted their research at Stanford. Lower left Stanford to head the cardiac program at the

Medical College of Virginia The VCU Medical Center is Virginia Commonwealth University's medical campus located in downtown Richmond, Virginia, in the Court End neighborhood. VCU Medical Center used to be known as the Medical College of Virginia (MCV), which merged with the ...

, and competed with Shumway,

Adrian Kantrowitz Adrian Kantrowitz (October 4, 1918 – November 14, 2008) was an American cardiac surgeon whose team performed the world's second heart transplant attempt (after Christiaan Barnard) at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York on December ...

, and

Christiaan Barnard Christiaan Neethling Barnard (8 November 1922 – 2 September 2001) was a South African cardiac surgeon who performed the world's first human-to-human heart transplant operation. On 3 December 1967, Barnard transplanted the heart of accident-v ...

to conduct the first successful human heart transplant. The Americans (Lower, Shumway, and Kantrowitz) were delayed due to disagreements over the differences between cardiac death versus brain death. While a solution was being found to those questions, Barnard, making use of Shumway and Lower's research, conducted the first successful (i.e. not resulting in immediate death) human heart transplantation, in South Africa on December 3, 1967.

subsequently also conducted a transplant in New York City on December 6, 1967. Shumway performed his first human transplantation on January 6, 1968. Lower performed his first successful human transplantation in May of that same year. Lower performed over 250 canine heart transplants, and over 800 in humans. He was sued for wrongful death of a donor, which held up his efforts, though he was later exonerated by courts. Lower subsequently developed the procedure of sending doctors to remote donor facilities, thus negating the previous requirement of transporting a donor's intact body to the same hospital as the recipient. He also pioneered the use of

ciclosporin Ciclosporin, also spelled cyclosporine and cyclosporin, is a calcineurin inhibitor, used as an immunosuppressant medication. It is a natural product. It is taken orally or intravenously for rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, Crohn's disease ...

to prevent

transplant rejection Transplant rejection occurs when transplanted tissue is rejected by the recipient's immune system, which destroys the transplanted tissue. Transplant rejection can be lessened by determining the molecular similitude between donor and recipient ...

, and developed a

biopsy A biopsy is a medical test commonly performed by a surgeon, interventional radiologist, or an interventional cardiologist. The process involves extraction of sample cells or tissues for examination to determine the presence or extent of a dise ...

technique to monitor rejection. Lower retired in 1989 to Montana, where he raised cattle, though he also volunteered at a

Richmond, Virginia (Thus do we reach the stars) , image_map = , mapsize = 250 px , map_caption = Location within Virginia , pushpin_map = Virginia#USA , pushpin_label = Richmond , pushpin_m ...

medical practice benefitting the poor. He died in 2008 of

pancreatic cancer Pancreatic cancer arises when cells in the pancreas, a glandular organ behind the stomach, begin to multiply out of control and form a mass. These cancerous cells have the ability to invade other parts of the body. A number of types of pancr ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lower, Richard 20th-century American educators 20th-century surgeons American surgeons Physicians from Detroit People from the San Francisco Bay Area Stanford University School of Medicine faculty Amherst College alumni Weill Cornell Medical College alumni 1929 births 2008 deaths