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MAKING ITS MARK ON MEDICINE
In the past 50 years, UCLA Medical Center has transformed itself from a single 320-bed hospital into a sophisticated healthcare system anchored by a 668-bed medical center recognized worldwide for its excellence in adult and pediatric tertiary care, teaching and research.
Housing both a full-service hospital for adults and Mattel Children’s Hospital, UCLA Medical Center has evolved into one of the leading centers for transplantation surgery, geriatrics, heart care, cancer treatment and surgery.
In the past five decades, UCLA Medical Center has admitted over 1.3 million patients, delivered nearly 100,000 babies and recorded more than 2 million visits to its Emergency Department. It has also been at the forefront of many significant medical advances through research.
“From the very beginnings of UCLA’s academic medical center, our physicians and scientists committed themselves to translating the advances in medical science to the treatment of their patients,” said Levey. “They correctly believed that the best patient care and the future of healthcare in the United States were dependent on the dramatic advances in biomedical research. This philosophy is the reason the UCLA Medical Center witnessed many ‘firsts’ in medical care.”
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Medical Breakthroughs | A Revolutionary Era in Medicine |
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A Revolutionary Era in Medicine
UCLA Medical Center faculty, medical students, patients and staff have witnessed revolutionary changes in medicine over the past five decades:
- In 1955, no CTs, MRIs or ultrasound technology existed. Diagnostic tools were largely limited to stethoscopes and crude X-ray machines.
- In 1955, children were kept indoors in the summer for fear of catching polio. Now vaccines for polio and other infectious diseases have nearly eradicated those conditions.
- In 1955, if you had abdominal pain, you often were required to undergo an exploratory abdominal operation for diagnosis. Today, MRI, CT, ultrasound and PET scans have virtually eliminated the need for diagnostic surgeries.
- In 1955, if you need a major operation, such as kidney or colon removal, you would often spend several weeks in the hospital on bed rest. Today, many of those same operations utilize minimally invasive procedures requiring less than a day in the hospital. Major operations, such as treating brain aneurysms, are now performed by radiology-guided catheters, with no incision necessary.
- In 1955, 100 percent of patients with failure of a major organ, such as a heart, lung, liver or kidney, typically died within a very short period. Today, surgeons perform transplants that allow most patients to resume a normal, productive life.
- In 1955, if you had testicular cancer, a common cancer in young men, the mortality was 100 percent if not diagnosed at the earliest stage. Today, the survival rate is almost 100 percent due to the development of chemotherapy to treat the condition.
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