In Memoriam: Dr. Beverly Evans-Britt

Excerpt

Dr. Beverly Britt passed away peacefully on October 25, 2016 at her house in Wales, close to her beloved garden, after a courageous battle with cancer. Former professor of anesthesia at the University of Toronto, Dr. Britt was an internationally recognized authority on malignant hyperthermia (MH). She also worked as an anesthesiologist at Toronto General Hospital (1960-1996). While caring for a patient who survived an MH event during the early 1960s, she recognized how little was known about MH at the time and embarked on a career of clinical and epidemiologic studies of this potentially fatal syndrome. She partnered with a well-known Canadian pharmacologist, Werner Kalow (1917-2008), to develop a preoperative diagnostic test to detect MH susceptibility. Their research was the basis for the North American caffeine-halothane contracture test and the European in vitro contracture test that are currently performed in MH centers around the world.

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