Why Texas? Why the Houston Medical Center?
The Texas Medical Center (TMC) near downtown Houston, Texas, is a phenomenal place. If you don’t know this area and you decide to join us for our inaugural course, you will love the energy of TMC. Over 7 million patients come through here every year. (You’ll realize that if you try to park!) It’s a sprawling downtown space with 54 member institutions. In fact, the TMC is just a little bit smaller than the entire downtown business district of Philadelphia.
It’s home to the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Texas Children’s Hospital, the Texas Heart Institute, and Hermann Hospital–among dozens of other world-famous hospitals and clinics. This is a part of Texas where history has been made–and continues to be made.
In 1953, a young doctor performed the world’s first successful carotid endarctomy right here. You may have heard of him. His name was Michael DeBakey.
In the 1960s, Dr. Denton Cooley transformed cardiology with the invention and modification of artificial heart valves. With his innovations, heart valve procedures went from having a 70% mortality rate to about 8%. In 1968, Dr. Cooley performed America’s first successful heart transplant–right here in Houston. This was followed in 1969 by the first implant of a total artificial heart.
Remember the Bubble Boy? In the 1970s, David Vetter lived in a specially created environment at the Texas Children’s Hospital to protect his immune system. Today Texas Children’s Hospital has a floor dedicated to kids who need pacemakers. Believe it or not, some babies need pacemakers, and that kind of delicate surgery is done here.
In 1976, James “Red” Duke, MD, redefined trauma care (and saved countless lives) with the use of helicopter “life flight” transports to a trauma center. Life flight seems familiar to all of us all over the country today–but it started here at TMC.
And it doesn’t end there. In 1997 and 1998, physicians at the TMC won back-to-back Nobel Prizes in Medicine. They were Roger Guillermin, MD, PhD and Ferid Murad, MD.
With world-class facilities, key opinion leaders, pioneering medical innovation, and Nobel Prize Winners, you can’t find a better place to kick-start your medical career than TMC. Join us! In my experience, there’s no greater career!