2008 Opening of the Carl J and Ruth Shapiro Cardiovascular Center, one of the most advanced cardiovascular care centers in the world
2005 Ralph Morton Bolman III, MD, is appointed Chief of Cardiac Surgery at BWH.
2001 BWH becomes the first hospital in New England to perform a complete operation on a patient with a surgeon directed, computer assisted robot
2000 The Virginia and James Hubbard Professorship in Cardiac Surgery is established at Harvard Medical School
2000 Four organ transplants from a single donor are performed for the first time in New England; two lungs, a heart, and a kidney are simultaneously given to four different recipients by the cardiac, thoracic, and renal transplant services
1998 Dr. Cohn is named the president of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, the first BWH surgeon to hold this leadership position
1997 A BWH patient is the first in New England to leave the hospital with an electrical LVAD system, a portable mechanical heart pump, implanted by Dr. Couper
1996 BWH is one of five hospitals nationwide to perform minimally invasive aortic and mitral valve surgery, operating through a 6-8 centimeter incision instead of a full sternotomy
1995 Three organ transplants from a single donor are performed for the first time in New England; two lungs and a heart are given to three different recipients
1992 Sary F. Aranki, MD, leads the team that performs the first heart lung transplant in Massachusetts
1991 Gregory S. Couper, MD, performs the first implant of a left ventricular assist device (LVAD) in New England
1991 Transmyocardial laser revascularization begins at BWH
1987 Dr. Cohn is appointed chief of the Division of Cardiac Surgery. Dr. Collins is named vice chair of the Department of Surgery
1984 The first heart transplant in New England is performed by a team headed by Dr. Collins and Dr. Cohn
1980 Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) opens, following the merger of the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, the Robert Breck Brigham Hospital, and the Boston Hospital for Women
1972 Lawrence H. Cohn, MD, and Dr. Collins are the first in New England to use porcine heterograft and homograft valves to replace diseased heart valves
1970 John J. Collins, Jr., MD, becomes chief of the Cardiac Surgery Service, a position he holds until 1987
1968 Arterial counter pulsation is invented at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital
1962 Dr. Harken performs the first clinical ball and cage aortic valve replacement
1948 The first series of operations for the successful repair of stenotic mitral heart valves is performed by Dwight Harken, MD
1923 The first successful mitral valve operation in the world is performed by Elliott Cutler, MD, who helped catalyze the hospital's prominent role in the emerging field of cardiac surgery
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