Nina Starr Braunwald
| Nina Starr Braunwald | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | Brooklyn, New York |
| Fields | |
| Institutions | |
| Education |
New York University Bellevue Hospital |
| Known for | Artificial heart valves |
| Spouse | Eugene Braunwald |
Nina Starr Braunwald (1928–1992) was an American thoracic surgeon and medical researcher who was among the first women to perform open-heart surgery. She was also the first woman to be certified by the American Board of Cardiothoracic Surgery, and the first to be elected to the American Association for Thoracic Surgery. In 1960, at the age of 32, she led the operative team at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) that implanted the first successful artificial mitral human heart valve replacement, which she had designed and fabricated. She died in August 1992 in Weston, Massachusetts, after a career that included prominent appointments at the NIH, University of California, San Diego, Harvard Medical School, and Brigham and Women's Hospital.
Nina Starr was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1928. She received her baccalaureate and medical degrees from New York University, and from 1952 to 1955 she trained in general surgery at New York's Bellevue Hospital, one of the first women to do so. In 1952 she married Eugene Braunwald, her classmate in college and medical school and also a cardiovascular researcher, with whom she had three daughters.
Braunwald completed her training in general surgery at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C., with a postdoctoral fellowship in the surgical laboratory of Dr. Charles A. Hufnagel, inventor of the first artificial heart valve. She joined the NIH National Heart Institute (now the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute) in nearby Bethesda, Maryland, in 1958 under the mentorship of Dr. Andrew G. Morrow. She was a Staff Surgeon at the National Heart Institute until 1965, and then was named Deputy Chief of the Clinic of Surgery, a position she held until 1968.
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