Whether it’s new treatments, innovative technologies or lifesaving vaccines, advancements in medical science can have a profound impact on your health. But it can be challenging to separate out the true breakthroughs from the hype when you’re reading about them in the media.
A medical breakthrough is a significant advance that substantially improves disease diagnosis, treatment or management, or increases the quality of people’s lives. Examples of such advances include the development of antibiotics, cancer drugs and cell-free RNA vaccines. In the past few years, these breakthroughs have significantly improved access to individualized treatments and therapies.
The medical community has long recognized the importance of recognizing milestones that mark the most important advances in medical science. One of the most popular has been The BMJ’s annual list of the top ten medical milestones since 1840, with the first prize awarded in 1901 to Emil von Behring for his treatment against deadly diphtheria and Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen for discovering X-rays. The invention of insulin marked another milestone, enabling millions of people to live long, healthy lives.
Other landmarks include the discovery of bloodless surgery by William TG Morton and the ability to control bleeding during surgery by Frederick Banting and John Macleod in 1922. In 1984, Dana-Farber scientists uncovered the gene that causes an inherited form of colon cancer. Brigham and Women’s surgeons performed the first triple-organ transplant – removing two lungs and a heart from a single donor – to give three patients a second chance at life.