a biography of the day-dr. dorothy hansine andersen (pathologist, 1st to recognize cystic fibrosis)

[niyad]

Dr. Dorothy Hansine Andersen was the first physician to recognize cystic fibrosis as a disease and, together with her research team, created the first tests to diagnose it. She also spent nearly a decade examining glycogen storage disease, and studied cardiac malformations in great detail. She collected many specimens for her pathological research and left a valuable catalogue of disease used to pioneer new surgical treatments.
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That same year she took up a position as assistant pathologist at Babies Hospital at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. Interested in inherited malformations of the heart, she began to collect the hearts of infants born with cardiac defects. In the mid-1940s, surgeons pioneering open-heart surgery sought out Andersen's help because of her vast knowledge of infant cardiology and her collection of specimens. She used her store of knowledge and experience to develop a training program for cardiac surgeons at several hospitals.

In 1958, she was made chief of pathology at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital and a full professor of pathology at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.
Andersen's duties included performing autopsies. While conducting an autopsy on a child who had presented the clinical picture of celiac disease, an illness caused by an intestinal hypersensitivity to gluten that inhibits digestion, Andersen noticed a lesion in the pancreas. Following an extensive search of the autopsy records and related medical literature, she discovered a clear, though previously unrecognized, disease pattern. She called it cystic fibrosis. But Andersen did not think of herself solely as a pathologist and continued to work on diagnosing this new disease in living patients. Andersen and her research team made numerous discoveries that led to a simple diagnostic test for cystic fibrosis, one that is still in use today.

Dr. Andersen considered herself a rugged individualist, a pediatric clinician, a research chemist, and a roofer and carpenter happy to make her own home improvements. Routinely described as "windblown" by friends and detractors alike, she was considered quite a character. She is said to have kept a particularly untidy lab, holding semi-annual "glüg" parties there, in honor of her Scandinavian heritage.
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http://www.nlm.nih.gov/changingthefaceofmedicine/physicians/biography_8.html



Dorothy Andersen Biography (1901-1963)

Nationality
American
Gender
Female
Occupation
physician, pathologist

Dorothy Andersen was the first medical researcher to recognize the disorder known as cystic fibrosis. She devoted much of her life to the further study ofthis disease, as well as to the study of congenital defects of the heart. During World War II, Anderson was asked to develop a training program in cardiac embryology and anatomy for surgeons learning techniques of open-heart surgery.
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Andersen put herself through Saint Johnsbury Academy and Mount Holyoke College before enrolling in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, from which she received her M.D. in 1926; while still a medical student, Andersen published two scientific papers dealing with the reproductive system of the female pig inthe prestigious journal Contributions to Embryology. After graduating from Johns Hopkins, Andersen accepted a one-year position teaching anatomy at the Rochester School of Medicine. She then did her internship in surgery at the Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, New York. For medical students an internship is normally followed by a residency, which ultimately leads to certification as a physician. However, Andersen was unable to find a hospital that would allow her to do a residency in surgery or to work as a pathologist because she was a woman.
Denied the opportunity to have a medical practice, Andersen turned instead to medical research. She took a job as research assistant in pathology at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons that allowed her to begin a doctoral program in endocrinology, the study of glands. She completed the course in 1935 and was granted the degree of doctor of medical science by Columbia University. From 1930 to 1935 Andersen also served as an instructor in pathology at the Columbia Medical School. Andersen later accepted an appointment as a pathologist at Babies Hospital of the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City, where she stayed for more than twenty years, eventually becoming chief of pathology in 1952. By 1958 she had become a full professor at the College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Andersen's research interests fell into two major categories. The first of these involved a long and careful study of congenital (existing from birth) heart problems based on the examination of infants who had died of cardiac conditions. She began that study during her first year at Babies Hospital and wasstill publishing her findings on the subject in the late 1950s. Andersen's experience with cardiac problems was put to use during World War II when she was asked to teach courses for physicians who wanted to learn how to conduct open-heart surgery.

Her second area of research, and the one for which Andersen is probably best known, evolved out of her discovery in 1935 of cystic fibrosis. That discovery came about during the postmortem examination (autopsy) of a child who had supposedly died of celiac disease, a nutritional disorder. Eventually she realized that she had found a disease that had never been described in the medical literature, to which she gave the name cystic fibrosis. Cystic fibrosis is a congenital disease of the mucous glands and pancreatic enzymes that results in abnormal digestion and difficulty in breathing; it is believed to affect approximately one in fifteen hundred people. Over the next twenty-six years,Andersen was successful in developing diagnostic tests for cystic fibrosis, but she was less successful in her efforts to treat and cure the disease.
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Read more: http://www.faqs.org/health/bios/3/Dorothy-Andersen.html#ixzz2TPMwaidI