Why Choose Us?

Sampling of Medical Firsts at California Pacific

• The American West's first medical school (Pacific Campus, 1857) and first nursing school (California Campus, 1880).
• The first iron lung west of the Mississippi (California Campus, 1928).
• The world’s first extra-anatomical bypass graft (Davies Campus, 1951).
• The first use of the term "nuclear medicine.” (By Robert Newell, M.D., Pacific Campus, 1950s).
• The first dialysis unit in Northern California (Davies Campus, 1961).
• The world’s first membrane heart-lung machine (artificial heart) (Pacific Campus, 1965).
• The first computerized respiratory monitoring system in any hospital (Pacific Campus, 1972).
• The nation's first successful microsurgery “toe-to-hand” transplant (Davies Campus, 1972).
• The first CT scanner west of the Mississippi (Davies Campus, 1972).
• The nation’s first heart transplant outside of a university research setting (Pacific Campus, 1984).
• The first complementary therapies in a major American medical center (Pacific Campus, 1997).
• The first successful re-attachment of a human tongue (Davies Campus, 1997).
• The first federally approved liver dialysis in Northern California (2000).
• The first capsule endoscopy in the Bay Area, whereby the patient swallows a tiny disposable camera to search for complex GI diseases (2001).