Brigham and Women's Hospital

Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) is a hospital in the Longwood Area of the Boston, Massachusetts neighborhood of Mission Hill. With Massachusetts General Hospital, it is one of the two founding members of Partners HealthCare.

Brigham and Women's is a major teaching affiliate (and directly adjacent to the campus) of Harvard Medical School. Brigham and Women's is also a member of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center and is part of the consortium of hospitals which operates Boston MedFlight.

Brigham and Women's Hospital represents the 1980 merger of three Harvard-affiliated Boston hospitals: the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital (est. 1913), the Robert Breck Brigham Hospital (est. 1914), and the Boston Hospital for Women. The latter was established in 1966 as a merger of the Boston Lying-In Hospital (est. 1832), one of America’s first maternity hospitals, and the Free Hospital for Women (est. 1875).

Brigham and Women's Hospital is home to one of the most powerful biomedical research institutes in the world. Over the last ten years, BWH has been one of the largest non-university recipient of research funding from the National Institutes of Health. Brigham and Women's Hospital is particularly known for its research in cardiovascular diseases (home of the TIMI trials), rheumatology, endocrinology, and laboratory medicine. The hospital has also consistently ranked highly in the U.S. News & World Report's Best Hospitals issue. As of 2007, the U.S. News and World Report rankings place BWH overall as the 10th-best hospital in the United States.

BWH received rankings in the top 10 for the following specialties :
 * kidney disease (1);
 * gynecology (2);
 * heart (3);
 * rheumatology (6);
 * endocrinology (9);
 * digestive disorders (10);

Historical notes and Firsts

 * 1847 Anesthesia is administered for the first time in childbirth (Boston Lying-in).
 * 1913 Harvey Cushing is named the surgeon-in-chief at the founding of Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and remained in this position for two decades. He made several key discoveries relating to neurosurgery and endocrinology.
 * In 1923 Dr. Elliot Cutler of the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital performed the world’s first successful heart valve surgery. The patient was a 12-year-old girl with rheumatic mitral stenosis who underwent mitral valve repair.
 * 1926 Drs. William Murphy, George Whipple and George Minot discover that liver extracts cure pernicious anemia, previously a rapidly fatal illness. In 1934, they share the Nobel Prize for this work (Peter Bent Brigham Hospital).
 * Soma Weiss was named the physician-in-chief of Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in 1939. He is noted for his discovery of esophageal lacerations with alcoholics, which was later termed as Mallory-Weiss syndrome.
 * 1949 Cortisone, a steroid treatment administered for the first time to patients with rheumatoid arthritis (Robert Breck Brigham Hospital)
 * 1949 Dr. Carl Walter invents and perfects a way to collect, store and transfuse blood - developing the world’s first blood bank (Peter Bent Brigham Hospital).
 * In 1954, the first successful human organ transplant, a kidney transplanted from one identical twin to another, was accomplished at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. Joseph Murray, MD, received the Nobel Prize in 1990 for this work and the subsequent development of immunosuppressive drugs.
 * 1962 DC cardioversion is used for the first time to restore normal rhythm to a heart in atrial fibrillation (Peter Bent Brigham Hospital).
 * 1989 Through the Physicians Heart Study is the first to prove aspirin could prevent a first heart attack (BWH).
 * 1994 - BWH unveils the world's first Intra-Operative Magnetic Resonance Imaging System for neurosurgery, specifically brain tumor craniotomy.
 * The Peter Bent Brigham Hospital was the home of the first coronary care unit (CCU), dedicated to the care of patients with acute heart disease.
 * Martin Samuels (Chief of Neurology) was featured in the late-1990s Discover Magazine television series episode "Fear".