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(Circulation Research. 2003;93:181.)
© 2003 American Heart Association, Inc.

Editorials

Energized by Circulation Research Over 30 Years

Hiroyuki Suga

From the National Cardiovascular Center Research Institute, Osaka, Japan.

Correspondence to Dr Hiroyuki Suga, Director General, National Cardiovascular Center Research Institute, 5-7-1 Fujishirodai, Suita, Osaka, 565-8565, Japan. E-mail hsuga@ri.ncvc.go.jp

Key Words: fiftieth anniversary • impact factor • Emax • pressure-volume area • cardiovascular research

An extract of the first 250 words of the full text is provided, because this article has no abstract.

Congratulations on the 50th anniversary of Circulation Research in 2003.

As a medical student of Okayama University in Japan in the early 1960s, I was very impressed by the well-designed cardiac pump function after watching and touching beating hearts in situ in canine open-chest experiments and learning about the heart in physiology classes. This definitely motivated me to learn more about cardiac function throughout my education. My dream in those days was to combine medicine and engineering as an extension of my electronics and mechanics hobbies since childhood days. I heard that the University of Tokyo had started the Institute for Medical Electronics and opened its PhD course for the first time in Japan.

After getting an MD at Okayama University in 1966, I entered the PhD course of Applied Physiology and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Tokyo instead of taking a clinical internship. As a PhD student, I decided to investigate the attractive but still mysterious cardiac function and started to measure left ventricular pressure and volume in the in situ beating canine heart. For aortic flow measurement, the electromagnetic flowmeter had just been commercialized, but I built one from the parts I bought in radio shops, relying on my own electromechanic savvy. I even made aortic flow probes by making their coils and electrodes and putting them together with epoxy glue.

Using the homemade electromagnetic flowmeter and a commercial manometer, I succeeded in measuring aortic flow and left ventricular pressure continuously for the first time in my . . . [Full Text of this Article]