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Robert L Frye, Dr Shahbudin H. Rahimtoola: After a long, successful career in which he defined the Hibernating myocardium Shahbudin Rahimtoola departed cardiology last year, European Heart Journal, Volume 40, Issue 11, 14 March 2019, Page 865, https://doi.org/10.1093/eurheartj/ehz075
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Dr Shahbudin Rahimtoola died 9 December 2018. We mourn with his family but celebrate a life lived with enthusiasm, dedication, high achievement in academic medicine, and devotion to the patients he served. Born in Bombay, India (October 1931) where his father served as Mayor, his education in India was interrupted by partition in 1947 when his family moved to Karachi, Pakistan. He completed his medical studies at Dow Medical College in Karachi followed by postgraduate studies in England.
He ventured to the USA, coming to the Mayo Clinic in 1963 to work in Dr Jeremy Swan’s Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory. Those were exciting times indeed as Drs John Kirklin and Dwight McGoon were achieving unique outcomes with cardiopulmonary bypass and repair of congenital heart defects. This was occurring in a milieu with remarkable breadth and depth in Cardiology, Physiology, and Pathology at Mayo, including Drs Howard Burchell, James Dushane, Earl Wood, John Shepherd, and others. Rahimtoola thrived in this environment. Examples of his work at that time include haemodynamics of single ventricle,1 clinical aspects of atrial septal defect,2 and technical challenges of measuring pulmonary artery pressures prior to decisions regarding surgical repair of transposition with percutaneous puncture of the pulmonary artery3 which were all staples of the day. When Swan left Mayo to join Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles, Rahimtoola became Co-Director of the Cardiac Lab along with Dr Donald Ritter.