Sutter Health History
A Rich Tradition of Medical Research
"Extremely difficult and delicate, requiring surgeons with strong, supple hands, and uncanny finger dexterity."
That's how newspapers described a ground-breaking surgery in 1962 by Sutter Memorial Hospital surgeons Edward Smeloff and Robert Cartwright, who captured national attention with their revoutionary Smeloff-Cutter heart valve. At the time, few scientists were even attempting such work, and fewer still were achieving any level of success.
During the same decade, clinicians at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco created the first heart-lung machine, and have been responsible for numerous other advances in areas such as breast cancer, leukemia, hemophilia and Lou Gehrig's disease.
Elsewhere in our system, Palo Alto Medical Foundation researchers have likewise made a mark on medical science. PAMF physicians were the first to use lasers in eye disease and skin treatment, and have conducted nationally noted studies of the heart muscle and heart disorders, as well as research focusing on the body's resistance to infection, and the genesis of cancer.
Sutter Health is committed to fostering a strong research environment where today's untested theories might well become tomorrow's lifesaving advances.