OUR SURGICAL HERITAGE

George Jerome Magovern, MD, November 17, 1923–November 4, 2013 George J. Magovern, Jr, MD Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, Allegheny Health Network, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

George Jerome Magovern, the 20th president of The Society of Thoracic Surgeons (1984–1985) and emeritus member of the American Board of Thoracic Surgery (1984–1991), died surrounded by his family on November 4, 2013. He leaves behind him a lasting commitment

to the advancement of patient care, education, and research. (Ann Thorac Surg 2014;98:1520–2) Ó 2014 by The Society of Thoracic Surgeons

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n November 4, 2013, my father, George Jerome Magovern, MD (Fig 1), died at the age of 89 years. He was a highly innovative cardiothoracic surgeon and was instrumental in establishing Pittsburgh as a major center for medical treatment and research. He was born November 17, 1923 in Brooklyn, New York, the youngest of 4 children living in the Flatbush Kings Highway section of the city in a duplex home with several aunts and uncles living upstairs or nearby. He was a product of the 1930s New York City Catholic school system at the height of the Great Depression. After graduating from St. John’s Preparatory School in 1940, he enrolled at Manhattan College determined to follow in the footsteps of his older brother, John J. Magovern, MD into the field of medicine. His studies at Manhattan College were disrupted by World War II. Interestingly enough, many universities and colleges suffered huge enrollment declines with World War II because the men who would normally be going to college went off to war instead. As a result, the federal government, working with the universities, designed the V-12 Navy College training program. The program was designed to supplement the force of commissioned officers in the United States Navy. More than 100,000 men enrolled in the V-12 program, which reversed the trend of declining college enrollment. After passing a rigorous qualifying examination, my father enrolled in the Navy V-12 medical unit program, which led to his transferring to Union College in Schenectady, NY. He was paid $50.00 a month and was required to wear a Navy uniform and underwent rigorous physical training each morning before class. One year later, he was accepted to Marquette University School of Medicine and graduated in 1947. Dr Magovern interned at King’s County Hospital in Brooklyn, New York. He was accepted into the general surgery residency program at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan but left after 1 year (1949–1950) and finished Address correspondence to Dr Magovern, Jr, Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, Allegheny Health Network, 320 E North Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15212; e-mail: [email protected].

Ó 2014 by The Society of Thoracic Surgeons Published by Elsevier

Fig 1. George J. Magovern, MD. Picture used by the American Board of Thoracic Surgery in their 1991 framed collage of current Board members.

his training at King’s County Hospital in 1953. With the outbreak of the Korean War on June 25, 1950, my father enlisted in the Army. Although the Korean War ended July 27, 1953, he was commissioned until 1955. He was stationed at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas. Nearby in Houston, Dr Michael DeBakey and Dr Denton Cooley were making great strides in cardiovascular surgery. The newly emerging field of thoracic surgery appeared promising to him and he decided to further his 0003-4975/$36.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.athoracsur.2014.05.100

training at George Washington University under the direction of Brian Blades, MD. Dr Blades was the President of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery (1957– 1958). He was editor of the Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery in 1962 and served until 1977. Dr Blades sent his residents to Pittsburgh to work with Edward M. Kent, MD at Allegheny General Hospital. Dr Kent (President of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, 1968) was having success with open heart procedures, most notably closure of atrial septal defects. The two worked well together and Dr Kent recruited Dr. Magovern to develop cardiac surgery at Allegheny. Between 1957 and 1962, the mortality rate for open heart procedures at Allegheny, like many centers throughout the country, was at least 15% to 20%. Both the HarkenSoroff and the Starr Edwards Model 1000 cage ball prostheses often required prolonged operative times, often leading to poor outcomes. In an effort to shorten operative times, Dr Magovern working with a local engineer, Harry Cromie, developed the Magovern-Cromie sutureless prosthetic aortic valve. The valve was first implanted April 13, 1962 in a 43-year-old white woman with severe aortic insufficiency. The early results of the valve were first reported in 1963 in Circulation [1]. The valve was widely used throughout the United States well into the 1970s. As demand for the sutureless valve increased, Dr Magovern and Mr Cromie started Surgitool, Inc, in 1962. Surgitool also produced valves for Dr DeBakey (DeBakey-Surgitool) in 1967 and for Dr Arthur Beall (Beall-Surgitool) in the mid-1960s. The company was sold to Baxter Healthcare in 1968. The company ceased production in 1980. The durability of the valve was exceptional. In 2008, a team of Israeli surgeons encountered a perfectly functioning MagovernCromie aortic valve that had been in place for 42 years and was believed to be the longest functioning valve ever documented [2]. On July 7, 1963, only 1 month after Dr James Hardy’s first unsuccessful lung transplant at the University of Mississippi, my father performed the world’s second left single-lung transplant at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Presbyterian Hospital in a 44-year-old man dying of emphysema. The patient died 8 days postoperatively of pneumonia. The operation was detailed in a case report published in the Annals of The New York Academy of Sciences in 1964 [3]. In 1970 my father was appointed Chief of Surgery at Allegheny after the sudden death of Edward M Kent, MD at age 62 years of a myocardial infarction. Over the next 25 years, thoracic and cardiovascular surgery flourished at Allegheny. In 1998, at the time of his retirement, the hospital performed more than 1,500 open heart procedures, the largest volume in Pennsylvania. In 1982, he was the first to publish the observation that a centrifugal pump could be used without heparin for long-term left heart support [4]. Soon afterward, he was the first to describe left atrial-femoral artery bypass with a centrifugal pump, again without heparin, to help prevent spinal cord injury in repairing traumatic tears of the thoracic aorta [5].

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Always the entrepreneur, he cofounded Respironics in 1976 with Gerald R McGinnis in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The company introduced the first continuous positive-airway pressure machine for the treatment of sleep apnea in 1985. The company was publicly traded in 1988 and was ultimately sold in 2007 to the Royal Philips Electronics Company. The major professional organizations of cardiothoracic surgery were important to him. Dr Magovern was a founding member of The Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) and presented a paper at the first meeting of STS in 1965 entitled “Bronchial Adenoma.” He served on the editorial board of the Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery (1975–1982) and on the council of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery (1978–1982). He was President of The Society of Thoracic Surgeons (1984– 1985). In his Presidential address, “How Shall We Then Practice?” he cited an article by Claude Welch, MD, who said, “The concept of medicine as a profession is under attack and is being replaced by the belief that it is a business enterprise” [6]. Dr Magovern stated that our strength as physicians is dependent on the patient’s faith in us rather than in government or industry. Fundamentally, physicians are members of a great profession founded on the principle of trust between the patient and the doctor. Interestingly enough, Dr Magovern reminded his colleagues that in 1965 the federal government promised that “nothing in this title (Medicare) shall be construed to authorize any federal official to exercise any supervision or control over the practice of medicine or the way medical services are provided or over the compensation of any institution” [6]. Dr Magovern was a member of the Thoracic Surgery Directors Association (1978–1995) and was privileged to serve on the American Board of Thoracic Surgery (1984– 1991). He was a member of the Residency Review Committee for Thoracic Surgery (1988-1992) and a member of the Residency Review Committee for General Surgery (Vascular) from 1990 to 1992. He was an invited lecturer to more than 200 regional and national meetings and was either author or senior author of more than 200 articles. In Pittsburgh, he was awarded “Man of the Year” by the Pittsburgh Academy of Medicine in 1980. Given his commitment to teaching and education, the educational conference center at Allegheny was dedicated in his name in 1988. In 1992 he was given the “Chairman’s Award” by the American Ireland Fund in recognition of his contributions to Pittsburgh. He was recognized by the Pennsylvania Medical Society with a “Distinguished Service Award” in 1993. He received the “Outstanding Achievement Award” by the Southwestern Pennsylvania Chapter of the American College of Surgeons in 1995. The Pittsburgh Business Times awarded him with a “Lifetime Achievement Award” in 2000, and he was the first recipient of the American Heart Association’s “Pulse of Pittsburgh Award” in 2003. Pittsburgh Magazine ranked my father one of the 100 “most influential Pittsburgher’s of the century” in 1999. In 2008, the Senator John Heinz History Center awarded Dr Magovern the “Medal of Innovation” award.

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In 1991, my father and Dr John Ochsner founded the Senior Cardiovascular Surgical Society, a 12-member group of senior surgeons all older than 60 years of age, which included Drs Norman Shumway, Stanford University Medical Center; Denton Cooley, Texas Heart Institute; Paul Ebert, University of California San Francisco Medical Center (and at the time, Executive Director, American College of Surgeons); Mortimer Buckley, Massachusetts General Hospital; Harvey Bender, Vanderbilt University Medical Center; James DeWeese, University of Rochester Medical Center; Jay Ankeney, Case Western Reserve University Medical Center; Richard Cleveland, Tufts University Medical Center; James Mackenzie, University of Medicine and Dentistry, New Jersey; and John Connolly, University of California Irvine Medical Center. Most of the members were chairs of their respective departments and dedicated to fellowship and golf. The annual scientific meetings of the society took place at various well known golf resorts. The last meeting of the society was held in 2003 and the society was disbanded shortly after its final meeting [7]. My brother James and I (Fig 2) followed in our father’s professional footsteps and joined him in practice at Allegheny. Upon his retirement, I succeeded my father as Chairman of the Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery at Allegheny General Hospital, now part of the Allegheny Health Network. I have also enjoyed the privilege of serving on the American Board of Thoracic Surgery (2011–2017). My brother James served as chief of cardiac surgery until his untimely death in 2007 from renal cell carcinoma. My parents raised 6 children. My father enjoyed his family life and loved playing the piano and playing golf. Our family has fond memories of our father playing the piano after dinner and at all family gatherings. He established a tradition of vacationing during the month of August in Stone Harbor, New Jersey with his immediate family and extended family from New York City. He eventually owned his own beach front property in Stone Harbor where he would typically relax with his family, play golf, and engage in touch football games on the beach. He was a member of several golf clubs, the most notable of which was the Rolling Rock Club in Ligonier, Pennsylvania. He spent many long weekends at Rolling Rock with his wife and family and with many of his friends in the specialty of thoracic surgery.

Ann Thorac Surg 2014;98:1520–2

Fig 2. Drs George Magovern, Jr, and James Magovern, both Halsted general surgery residents, outside the Johns Hopkins Hospital, 1982.

My father will be remembered not only as a pioneering surgeon but also for his warmth, compassion, and generosity. He leaves a legacy of a life well lived. He loved his family. He had an infectious enthusiasm for the field of thoracic and cardiovascular surgery. His patients loved his bedside manner and confidently put their trust in his hands.

References 1. Magovern GJ, Kent EM, Cromie HW. Sutureless artificial heart valves. Circulation 1963;27:784–8. 2. Zlotnick AY, Shiran A, Lewis B, Aravot D. A perfectly functioning Magovern-Cromie sutureless prosthetic aortic valve 42 years after implantation. Circulation 2008;117:e1–2. 3. Magovern GJ, Yates A. Human homotransplantation of left lung: report of a case. Ann NY Acad Sci 1964;120:710–28. 4. Dixon CM, Magovern GJ. Evaluation of the Biopump for longterm cardiac support without heparinization. J Extra-Corp Technol 1982;14:331. 5. Olivier HF, Maher TD, Liebler GA, Park SB, Burkholder JA, Magovern GJ. Use of the Biomedicus centrifugal pump in traumatic tears of the thoracic aorta. Ann Thorac Surg 1984;38: 586–91. 6. Magovern GJ. STS Presidential Address. How shall we then practice? Ann Thorac Surg 1985;40:103–12. 7. Cooley DA. Senior Cardiovascular Surgery Society (letter). Ann Thorac Surg 2013;95:2216.

George Jerome Magovern, MD, November 17, 1923-November 4, 2013.

George Jerome Magovern, the 20th president of The Society of Thoracic Surgeons (1984-1985) and emeritus member of the American Board of Thoracic Surge...
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