Richard D. Rowe Memorial Lecture
Presented by Kei Takahashi, M.D., Ph.D.
Toho University Ohashi Medical Center
Richard D. Rowe, M.D.
(1923–1988)
1988: Takao Atsuyoshi, M.D.
RoseVera, M.D.
1991: Anton E. Becker, M.D.
1999: Soichiro Kitamura, M.D.
2001: Tetsu Yamaguchi, M.D.
2005: Brian W. McCrindle, M.D.
2008: Masahiro Ishii, M.D.
2012: Shunichi Ogawa, M.D.
2015: Etsuko Tsuda, M.D.
2018: Yoshihide Mitani, M.D.
2021: Kei Takahashi, M.D.

Richard D. Rowe had a remarkable academic career. In his early years as a researcher, he focused on fetal
physiology, and his observations were reported in his M.D. thesis. During his initial association with the Hospital for
Sick Children in Toronto, Canada, he, the late John Keith, and Peter Vlad were very much involved with virtually
every aspect of congenital heart disease. They defined the clinical-pathological correlations of many forms ofcongenital heart disease, and in the midand late 1950s, a series of their papers catalogued clinical and angiocardiographic findings in a wide range of congenitally malformed hearts. These observations culminated in the first editionof the now-classic textbook known as “Keith, Rowe, and Vlad.”Leaving Toronto in the late 1950s, he returned home briefly to New Zealand, where he continued to makeacademic contributions while at Green Lane. He was summoned back to North America in 1963 to assume theposition of Director of Pediatric Cardiology at Johns Hopkins University and lived in Baltimore, Maryland, for thenext decade. His interest in the classic forms of congenital heart disease continued, but his longtime interest in theneonate with congenital heart disease took the form of a book of that name, published by W.B. Saunders Co. andcoauthored by Ali Mehrizi. The 1960s saw the creation of the collaborative U.S. Natural History Study of Congenital
Heart Disease, and both Johns Hopkins University and Dick Rowe himself played integral roles in this benchmark
study, the summary of which was published in a supplement to Circulation in 1977.
While his interest in the classic structural forms of congenital heart disease never really waned, his curiosity
about disorders of the transitional circulation, as well as his longtime interest in perinatal physiology and thenewborn, led to another phase of his academic development: his interest in nonstructural heart disease. In 1972, withTom Hoffman, he described babies with disordered transitional circulation who developed transient myocardialischemia. After his return to Toronto in 1973, he instigated a number of papers describing the clinical and biochemical abnormalities of disturbed transitional myocardial circulation as well as the role of thallium scintigraphy in its
assessment. Thus, it is not surprising that in the later years of his career, his interest in nonstructural heart disease led
him to explore endocardial fibroelastosis in depth and to develop a particular expertise in the mucocutaneous lymph
node syndrome of Kawasaki disease. He was very interested in virtually all aspects of this disorder, and defined theextent of Kawasaki disease in Canada. At the time of his premature death in 1988, he was working on the earlystages of a monograph about selected aspects of acquired heart disease. One of the chapters he had finished at thetime of his death was about Kawasaki disease.
Dick Rowe was a man of extraordinary talent: a warm and human physician, a gifted and stimulating teacher,a prolific and thoughtful clinician-scientist, and a superb advocate for the growing field of pediatric cardiovascular
medicine. Although he was a private man who shunned the limelight, I know that Dick would be most pleased andhonored to have this lecture named in this honor.
Robert M. Freedom, M.D.
The 13th International Kawasaki Disease Symposium
Presented on October 31, 2021 in the virtual meeting