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J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg 2003;126:321-322
© 2003 The American Association for Thoracic Surgery

Editorial

Priority issue: who is on first base?

Francis Robicsek, MD, PhDa,*

a Carolinas Heart Institute, Department of Thoracic & Cardiovascular Surgery, Charlotte, NC, USA

Received for publication October 28, 2002; accepted for publication February 12, 2003.

* Address for reprints: Francis Robicsek, MD, PhD, Carolinas Heart Institute, Department of Thoracic & Cardiovascular Surgery, 1001 Blythe Blvd, Suite 30, Charlotte, NC 28203, USA
tjohn@sanger-clinic.com

Key Words: 4

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

We have always been infatuated with firsts. The first to circumnavigate the Earth, the first to fly, the first to run the four-minute mile, the first to reach the North Pole—whatever. However, besides athletics, there is no other profession than medicine—surgery leading–that has been so deeply involved with the question, "Who did it first?"

Although some of our firsts occurred in the 19th and the early 20th centuries, the real quest for firsts in cardiac surgery began in the early 1930s. Most, if not all, of our professional publications on clinical subjects began with the magic words: "first described" or "first performed." Everybody scurried to be recognized pioneering in this or that, preferably to have a disease or a procedure named after them. The reasons for this are not entirely clear. Why would anybody want his or her name connected with a condition in which a child looks like an elf, . . . [Full Text of this Article]






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