2006 Heart-Brain summit proceedings
The dream behind the summit
ARTICLE INTRODUCTION
Aloha kakou. I am known as a dream weaver, and I have had a dream since the mid-1960s about heart-brain medicine. From 1965 to 1969 I worked with Drs. Seymour Schwartz and Eugene Braunwald on stimulating the carotid sinus nerve for various cardiac problems and on stimulating the brain for different heart reactions. From that point forward my dream was to start an in-depth study of heart and brain interactions. I hoped we could get results easily.
I tried in the "Medical Alley" in Minnesota to get some groups interested, but each group wanted to start a heart center or a brain center, not to have them combined.
In 1978, Medtronic was able to put together a convention on heart-brain interactions in Miami. Dr. Douglas P. Zipes and Dr. Michael Bilitch attended. “That was the start of something of great importance,” said Dr. Zipes and other leading physicians. Yet after the convention was over, nothing really happened⎯not for the next quarter century.
Then, in July 2004, a meeting was held at my condo at the Mauna Lani Hotel in Hawaii with two doctors from Cleveland Clinic who wanted to see our hospital (North Hawaii Community Hospital). The topic of heart-brain medicine came up, and the doctors thought it was interesting and went back to Cleveland with the idea. From that idea came the development of the institute that has convened this summit.
Since then much has happened, and we now have a great team of people that form the Bakken Heart-Brain Institute.