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Sinai Firsts
Clinical Firsts
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1953 |
The new Mount Sinai Hospital at 550 University Avenue opens with the only outpatient department in Toronto that offers prenatal instruction and diabetes education in four languages. The next year, the Hospital adds the city’s first Social Services Department. |
1955 |
The Department of General Practice opens with the first Family Practice Unit in a large city hospital in Canada. |
1969 |
Mount Sinai purchases one of Toronto’s first mammography machines and the city’s first ultrasound equipment. |
1974 |
Mount Sinai launches Canada’s first Patient Representation Program Endocrinologist Dr. Paul Walfish develops a test for newborns with congenital hypothyroidism and a way to correct it. This procedure is now standard practice throughout the world. |
1980 |
Mount Sinai is named the site of the first National Breast Screening Study. |
1981 |
The Ontario Ministry of Health selects Mount Sinai as the site of a new High Risk Perinatal Unit, the first academic program of its kind in Canada. |
1984 |
Mount Sinai and Toronto General collaborate on Toronto’s first heart-lung transplant. |
1987 |
Dr. Allan Gross and his team perform Canada’s first fresh tissue hip transplant. Five years later, his team performs Canada’s first knee joint transplant. |
1988 |
The Maternal/Fetal Medicine group introduces invasive fetal intervention procedures to monitor and treat rare blood disorders in mothers and babies. |
1992 |
Mount Sinai’s Department of Nursing is selected as a World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Nursing, the only hospital department in the world to earn that distinction. Dr. Robert Morrow and team perform Ontario’s first intravascular-intrauterine blood transfusion and the Hospital establishes Toronto’s first Bone and Tissue Bank. |
1995 |
Mount Sinai is named “possibly the best all-around hospital in the country” in the publication, The Best Hospitals in North America. |
1996 |
In partnership with the University of Toronto, Mount Sinai establishes the Heather M. Reisman Chair in Perinatal Nursing Research, Canada’s first endowed chair for nursing research. |
1998 |
The first Surgical Skills Centre in North America opens at Mount Sinai in collaboration with the University of Toronto. The Centre provides high-tech equipment to teach basic and complex surgical procedures through repeated hands-on practice. |
2001 |
Mount Sinai opens Ontario’s first multidisciplinary Chronic Pelvic Region Pain Unit to provide a pain-focused approach to disorders that affect over 50% of women and are often under-diagnosed, misdiagnosed and poorly treated. |
2005 |
Mount Sinai wins the 2005 Healthy Hospital Innovator Award and receives Level One recognition from the National Quality Institute’s Healthy Workplace Progressive Excellence Program. |
2007 |
For the second year in a row, Mount Sinai Hospital is named a Top 50 Employer in the Greater Toronto are by Mediacorp Canada Inc. |
Research Firsts
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1986 |
The Lunenfeld’s Dr. Tony Pawson receives international acclaim for discovering how cells communicate with each other. |
1994 |
Dr. Katherine Siminovitch, an investigator in the molecular genetics of rheumatic and auto-immune diseases, discovers a genetic marker for a fatal condition called Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome. Genetic counselors across North America begin using this marker for their diagnoses. |
1995 |
Tony Pawson discovers a domain within cells that is altered when a normal cell becomes a cancerous one.
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1996 |
Dr. Joseph Culotti uses earthworms to make important breakthroughs in our understanding of how our nervous systems develop and how cancer cells form and spread. |
1997 |
Drs. Tony Pawson, John Roder and Jeff Henderson discover a gene responsible for connections between the two sides of the brain—a major step towards understanding congenital brain defects.
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1998 |
Drs. Isabella Canaggia and Stephen Lye make a major advance in our understanding of pre-eclampsia, the major cause of death in pregnant women. Drs. Irene Andrulis, Shelley Bull and colleagues publish a landmark study on the prognosis value of a molecular genetic marker as a predictor of clinical outcomes for women with node-negative breast cancer. The Lunenfeld now has more recipients of the Medical Research Council Distinguished Scientists awards than any other University or Research Institute in Canada.
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2001 |
Mount Sinai researchers discover that the Mgat5 gene and a family of sugar- binding proteins act as a key regulator of T cells in the immune system, a discovery that could lead to new drug development and treatments for patients with autoimmune diseases, as well as cancer and HIV. Researchers publish a study finding that blood insulin levels appear to be a reliable predictor of whether women with breast cancer will survive over the long term, which women with breast cancer will respond well to treatment and which are at high risk of dying. |
2005 |
Dr. Andras Nagy and his team develop Canada’s first two human embryonic stem cell lines, giving researchers across the country new potential and hope for eventually discovering treatments and cures for many chronic and fatal diseases. |
2006 |
Dr. John Roder makes national headlines for his groundbreaking research characterizing a gene that’s implicated in schizophrenia and depression. Dr. Steven Gallinger and colleagues make headlines for their colon cancer findings, which could help develop a test to predict who will or won’t get the disease. |
2007 |
Dr. Andrea Jurisicova reveals that pre-conception exposure to environmental pollutants diminishes the fertility of mother’s future offspring. Dr. Daniel Durocher and his team discover how the BRCA 1 gene (which is mutated in a large fraction of familial breast cancers) can be guided to repair DNA damage. The finding, published in top journal Science, could significantly advance breast cancer research. Dr. Katrina MacAulay paves the way toward new treatments for Type 2 diabetes when she creates a “genetic roadblock” to improve blood-sugar regulation. |