Brigham and Women's Hospital, a world leader in patient care, medical education, and research, is consistently named to US News and World Report's Honor Roll of top hospitals. A major teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospital is a world-renowned center for advanced patient care and for its pioneering work in virtually every area of medicine.
Brigham and Women’s Hospital embodies core values that guide all its work. These values are:
- Quality Patient Care: Delivering quality patient care is the center of everything the hospital does.
- Teaching Excellence: Brigham and Women’s seeks to uphold the highest standards in training health care professionals.
- Research Leadership: Brigham and Women’s continuously seeks new ways to demonstrate a leadership role in research.
Two Decades of Excellence Built on Two Centuries of Tradition
Brigham and Women’s Hospital was formed in 1980, drawing together three distinguished predecessors, the Boston Hospital for Women, the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and the Robert Breck Brigham Hospital. The earliest of these hospitals -- Boston Hospital for Women -- was founded in 1832 as one of the nation’s first maternity hospitals. The Peter Bent Brigham Hospital was established in 1911 "for the care of sick persons in indigent circumstances" with a bequest from restaurateur and real estate baron Peter Bent Brigham. The Robert Breck Brigham Hospital, founded in 1914 with a bequest from Peter Bent Brigham’s nephew, opened with a mission to serve patients with arthritis and other debilitating joint diseases. By combining the resources of these hospitals and building upon their traditions of excellence, Brigham and Women’s hospital has become acknowledged as a leader in clinical practice, surgery, and research.
Clinical and Research Milestones
- 1984 The first heart transplant in New England is performed at BWH.
- 1984 BWH researchers launch a series of national clinical studies known as the TIMI trials (Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction), which demonstrate that new "clot busting" (thrombolytic) drugs can save heart muscle and improve patients’ chances of surviving a heart attack. The series of 24 trials, eight which are ongoing, has revolutionized the care of heart-attack patients.
- 1985 The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, an organization co-founded by BWH cardiologist Bernard Lown, MD.
- 1991 BWH is acknowledged as having received more citations in scientific papers than any other hospital in the world for the period 1986 through 1990.
- 1992 BWH performs the first heart-lung transplant in Massachusetts.
- 1992 A gene responsible for a severe, early-onset form of hypertension which runs in families is identified at BWH.
- 1992 BWH researchers discover that a protein (amyloid beta) thought to be an early, causative feature of Alzheimer’s disease is also present in healthy individuals, and that patients with Alzheimer’s produce too much of this protein or cannot break it down properly.
- 1993 BWH is selected by the National Institutes of Health as one of 16 Vanguard Centers nationwide to help lead the Women’s Health Initiative, the largest clinical trial ever undertaken in American women.
- 1994 BWH unveils the world’s first Intra-Operative Magnetic Resonance Imaging System. This invention, which enables clinicians to take images of the body’s interior during surgery, makes it possible to cure patients with brain tumors that previously were considered inoperable.
- 1994 BWH researchers at the helm of the national Survival and Ventricular Enlargement (SAVE) trial report that ace inhibitors (captopril) significantly reduce heart-attack survivors’ risk of recurrent heart attack and death.
- 1994 The 12-story Center for Women and Newborns opens. The facility, which in is named the Mary Horrigan Connors Center for Women’s Health, sets a new standard in obstetrical and newborn care, featuring home-like birthing suites, private postpartum and antepartum rooms that promote family-focused care, and a 46-bed Newborn Intensive Care Unit with overnight rooms for parents.
- 1995 BWH performs the nation’s first triple organ transplant, removing three organs from a single donor-two lungs and a heart-and transplanting them into three patients, giving each a new lease on life.
- 1996 BWH researchers discover that exposure to bright light alone resets the human biological clock and successfully alters by several hours a patient*s "circadian pacemaker," which keeps the body’s internal system in syncrony with the external light-dark cycle.
- 1996 BWH becomes one of only 10 hospitals in the country to perform "minimally invasive" aortic valve surgery.
- 1996 BWH researchers at the helm of the Cholesterol and Recurrent Events (CARE) trial report that cholesterol-lowering statin drugs (pravastatin) significantly lower heart-attack survivors’ risk of recurrent heart attack and death.
- 1999 Amid national discourse on the need to reduce errors in medicine, BWH researchers report that the hospital’s own computerized drug-order entry system reduces the incidence of serious medication-related errors by 55 percent, setting a new benchmark for the country.
- 2000 In what is believed to be a "first" in organ transplantation, BWH performs a quadruple transplant. Harvesting four organs from a single donor - a kidney, two lungs and a heart - hospital surgeons give new hope to four patients, all of whom weather their surgeries well.
