(Circulation. 1999;100:2122.)
© 1999 American Heart Association, Inc.
In Memoriam |
Harriet Pearson Dustan
1 The University of Alabama at Birmingham,
Birmingham, Ala
Harriet Pearson Dustan, pioneer in clinical cardiovascular research and dedicated American Heart Association volunteer, succumbed to lung cancer on June 25, 1999, after a lengthy illness. Dr Dustan’s long and productive career spanned the modern era of research on the pathophysiology and treatment of hypertension in humans. Discoveries made by Dr Dustan and colleagues in the 1950s have influenced the practice of medicine for nearly a half century. For example, she was the first person ever to give sodium nitroprusside to a human being. Her descriptions of the efficacy of sodium nitroprusside in the treatment of severe hypertension and hypertensive crisis formed the basis of extensive contemporary use of that potent and reliable vasodilator drug in many areas of cardiovascular medicine.
Other firsts for Dr Dustan and her Cleveland Clinic research group were
the discovery that thiazide diuretics potentiate the blood
pressure–lowering effects of other classes of antihypertensive drugs;
description of the rheumatic and febrile syndrome associated with
hydralazine treatment; successful long-term treatment of
malignant hypertension; clinical and pathological characterization of
the syndrome of renovascular hypertension, including
histological characterization of the various forms of
renal artery disease and assessment of the effects of surgical
revascularization of the kidney(s); definition of
the hemodynamics and renal functional defects of
primary aldosteronism; elucidation of the importance of intravascular
volume in the pathogenesis of systemic hypertension; and description of
the hyperdynamic circulation that is characteristic of the early stages
of hypertension. In more recent years, she made major contributions to
our understanding of the