Featured Research

Following years of painstaking research in his surgical research laboratory, Leonard L. Bailey, MD, performed the first infant heart transplant in 1984. Dr Bailey had experienced the death of too many patients born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, and was driven to find a cure. The surgery was technically difficult because of the small size of blood vessels that must be stitched together. But an even greater challenge came from attempts by the infant's body to reject the transplanted heart. Dr. Bailey and his team developed new ways to manage the rejection and he now stays in contact with transplant recipients who are thriving after more than 20 years. Dr. Bailey has trained many generations of thoracic surgeons in his techniques. Today, after more than three hundred successful infant heart transplants, Loma Linda University Medical Center is still the most successful infant heart transplant program.

James M. Slater, MD, a radiologist, recognized that proton radiation for oncology could deliver more energy to a tumor with less collateral damage to the surrounding healthy tissue than conventional radiation. He recruited a team of distinguished atomic physicists to design a room-sized cyclotron that was constructed by Fermi National Laboratory and installed in Loma Linda University Medical Center. There followed an intensive research program to determine the optimal condition for radiation therapy and development of computerized procedures. After twenty years of research and clinical practice, the James M. Slater Proton Therapy Center continues to treat more patients than any other proton therapy center.

Dentists had a choice of general anesthesia or no pain control before Neils Björn Jörgensen, DDS, developed the nerve block technique used by dentists today. His career was devoted to research and improvement of dental education.

Dr. Jörgensen's teaching film, "Inferior Alveolar, Lingual and Buccal Nerve Block," and eight additional films, were translated into other languages and kept in constant circulation by the Bureau of Audio-Visual Services of the American Dental Association. Dr. Jörgensen's textbook, Sedation, Local and General Anesthesia in Dentistry (published in 1966), was distributed throughout the United States, Western Europe, and South America.

Dr. Jörgensen's teaching program at Loma Linda University anticipated by at least fifteen years most of the recommendations in the Guidelines for Teaching the Comprehensive Control of Pain and Anxiety in Dentistry (1971). In 1960 Dr. Jörgensen won the prestigious Heidbrink Award, presented by the American Dental Society of Anesthesiology. In 1966 he received the John Mordaunt Prize, the highest honor of the British Society for the Advancement of Anesthesiology in Dentistry, being its sole recipient until his death in 1974. The National Institutes of Health based its guidelines for pain control on the Jörgensen Technique.

In 1966 Melvin P. Judkins, MD, introduced the Judkins Technique of Coronary Arteriography, which creates X-ray pictures of the blood vessels of the heart. While he did not originate coronary arteriography, Judkins' technique and ingenious catheter designs greatly simplified the procedure.

During the procedure, a radiologist eases a tiny hollow plastic tube (about the diameter of the lead in a large pencil) up the large artery of one of the legs, first to the aorta and then, in turn, to the left and right coronary arteries. In each location, a colorless liquid called “contrast”, is injected through the tube (vascular catheter) into the coronary arteries that supply blood to the heart muscle, making them visible on X-ray film. The patient's physician is thus able to see the exact location and extent of any disease. These pictures then make it possible for cardiologists and heart surgeons to select the preferred method of treatment. The Judkins Technique of Coronary Arteriography is recognized internationally as a major contribution to medicine.

These studies have included cellular markers for hypoxia, and the role of hypoxia-ischemia on gene expression in the developing brain. In conjunction with these studies, Dr. Longo wrote the section in the Surgeon General's Report on smoking and health hazards to the mother and fetus. He also played a key role in legislation that required warning labels on cigarette packages.

During the past decade, most of Dr. Longo's efforts have concentrated on exploring basic biochemical mechanisms of signal transduction in cerebral arteries. How do these change with development from fetus to newborn to adult, and in response to long-term hypoxia. The goal of these studies has been to integrate knowledge of cerebrovascular regulation at the cell and molecular level. His in vivo studies investigated the role of regulation by the various enzymes and the role of free radicals in reperfusion injury. Then all of this had to be translated to the bedside in the improved management of the premature infant with dysregulation of cerebral blood flow.

Brian S. Bull, MD, led a team of researchers who developed a method that significantly increases the safety and success of open-heart surgery. During the surgery, physicians administer heparin, an anticoagulant medication, used to prevent clotting of the blood. After surgery another medicine, protamine, neutralizes the effects of the anticoagulant. Anesthesiologists once followed strict guidelines based on the patient's weight and body surface area to calculate the heparin and protamine doses.

The Loma Linda University team concluded that the traditional weight/surface area method could lead to dangerous clotting or other hazards because of a wide variability in patient response. They developed a method of individualizing the medication dosage, depending on how a sample of the patient's blood responds to the heparin and protamine during the first few minutes of surgery. During their research the team developed mathematical calculations to plot an individual dose-response curve from which the correct doses could then be determined.