Penn Medicine's Abramson Cancer Center is the source of this photo/fact: More than 110,000 chemotherapy infusions and radiation treatments are given to Penn cancer patients each year.
The subjects of this photo/fact are Raymond and Ruth Perelman, contributors of the largest single donation for the naming of a medical school (the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania) in U.S. history.
After nearly 13 years of study and intense debate, Penn Medicine scientists were the ones to confirm exactly how a once-popular class of anti-inflammatory drugs led to cardiovascular risk for the people taking it.
This fact and photo both highlight one of the many tools with which Penn Medicine's Abramson Cancer Center works to make cancer a thing of the past. Introducing the cyclotron. We use it to accelerate protons to nearly the speed of light, then aim those protons at cancer cells. Though the cyclotron is only slightly larger than an SUV, it weighs 220 tons — as much as a 747 jetliner.
Our doctors were the first to successfully use a mechanical ventilator to save the life of a premature infant in 1963, ushering in the modern era of neonatal intensive care.
Penn Medicine researchers developed the world's first practical clinical test to detect smell and taste disorders. (For the record, no, it was not right under their noses the whole time.)
Pennsylvania Hospital (the nation’s first hospital, founded in 1751) established a “lying-in,” or maternity department, in 1803 — making obstetrics its first recognized specialty.Now, 211 years later, Pennsylvania Hospital is the birthplace of more babies in the City of Philadelphia than any other hospital. Combined with the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, nearly a third of the 23,000 or so babies born each year in Philly come into the world at Penn Medicine!
Penn Medicine surgeons at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania have performed more than 1,000 heart transplants since the program was established more than 25 years ago.
Digging into the history books for this fact: Only two medical schools in the United States are older than the United States itself, and the University of Pennsylvania is home to the very first — established in 1765 by John Morgan, MD, as the College of Philadelphia Department of Medicine.
Penn Medicine surgeons were the first in the Northeast to implant a temporary total artificial heart in a patient waiting for a heart transplant.
We can't get enough of these heart facts, and hopefully neither can you. Here's another you might not have known, with a historical twist: The nation's first Coronary Care Unit opened here in 1963.
As a symbol of medicine, the X-ray is almost as recognizable as the stethoscope — and if you go back nearly 125 years, you'll find a significant milestone in its history relates back to Penn (and gives us this fact): The world's first X-ray image was produced by Penn scientists in 1890.
Penn Medicine pharmacists dispense more than 12 million prescriptions and doses of medications annually.
When you're dealing with a system as large as Penn Medicine, the numbers can quickly become staggering. If you'd like to confirm that, check in with one of our surgical pathologists. They handle nearly 40,000 surgical specimens and diagnostic consults every year.
PennSTAR is the Penn Medicine flight program serving victims of trauma, cardiac arrests, heart attacks, strokes, and other time-sensitive illnesses requiring specialized care from Penn Medicine physicians and surgeons. PennSTAR has provided this service to more than 30,000 patients since 1998 — and in that span, they've logged enough miles in the air to circle the earth more than 65 times.
This photo/fact was only made possible by the work of the late Christian J. Lambertsen, MD, founder and former director of Penn’s Institute for Environmental Medicine: In the 1930s, Penn scientists created the first self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. You know it today as the SCUBA.
The history of blood transfusion is long and complicated, but one very important milestone in its development occurred within Penn Medicine's walls: Pennsylvania Hospital's Philip Syng Physick performed the first transfusion of human donor blood at Penn in 1795 — nearly 20 years prior to British obstetrician James Blundell's more well-documented efforts.
Recognize these faces from the Penn Medicine yearbook? On the left is television's Emmy award-winning Dr. Oz, and on the right is ABC News Chief Health and Medical Editor Richard Besser. Both were members of the Class of 1986!
You may not recognize them, but the gentlemen you see in this photo are behind an immense achievement in the field of cancer research. They are Penn Medicine's Peter Nowell and Fox Chase Cancer Center's David Hungerford, and in 1960 they discovered the Philadelphia Chromosome — demonstrating, for the first time, the genetic basis for cancer.
Penn Medicine neurosurgeons have conducted more than 900 Deep Brain Stimulation procedures — the most in the country. The procedure is typically utilized on patients with Parkinson's disease, as well as clinical trial participants with other mental health and neurodegenerative disorders.
The Penn Defibrillator Design Challenge launched its inaugural design today at 30th Street Station (seriously, check it out). A number of the minds behind the design challenge were also behind the MyHeartMap Challenge of early 2012 — which is the inspiration and source behind this photo/fact: Penn Medicine researchers created the first smartphone app designed to locate automated external defibrillators, which are used to save lives during sudden cardiac arrests.
Obviously, getting astronauts to Mars isn't as simple as throwing the shuttle into cruise control and hoping for the best, but it's even more complicated than most people might imagine. Things we could otherwise take for granted pose legitimate issues to anybody making the trip. Sleep, for example. Thankfully, Penn Medicine researchers are on the case — and their work is behind this fact: Those Penn Medicine researchers have mapped out the sleep-wake cycle necessary for astronauts to survive the 17-month space flight to Mars.
Examination gloves are so ingrained in the clinical experience that it's almost easy to forget how essential they are to the practice of safe, healthy medicine. These simple (yet critical) garments take up quite a bit of space in our supply cabinets — as well they should, since Penn Medicine clinicians use about 250,000 boxes of them every year.
We're digging into our history yet again for this fact: The first public telecast of a surgery was an ulcer operation performed at Penn Medicine in 1952.
Penn Medicine's Abramson Cancer Center is home to the team behind this fact: We were the first to put leukemia patients into long-term remissions by training their own immune cells to attack their cancer.
This fact and photo were only made possible by Penn Medicine - Penn Transplant Institute: Penn Medicine completed the region's first bilateral hand transplant in 2013.
New and developing technologies have changed medicine in ways many could never have imagined only a short time ago, and Penn Medicine is working on innovative ways to use them. For example, we've developed a smartphone app that allows a patient to take an image of a skin condition with their phone and share it with their dermatologist. It's called teledermatology, and it's the source of this photo/fact.