After almost 35 years of dedicated service to the Texas Heart Institute in many vital roles, Dr. Robert J. Hall is announcing his retirement from the clinical practice of cardiology and from his administrative responsibilities, including his editorship of the Texas Heart Institute Journal, in which capacity he has served for the last 20 years.
In 1969, Dr. Hall was appointed medical director and chief of cardiology at the Texas Heart Institute and St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital, after an impressive career in the medical department of the United States Army. From 1948 to that date, he had risen to the rank of full colonel. He was chief of the cardiology service at Walter Reed Hospital, Washington, D.C., from 1966 to 1969, where he became personally responsible for the care of President Eisenhower during his extended cardiac illness. Soon after the president's death, Dr. Hall resigned from Walter Reed and accepted an appointment at the Texas Heart Institute as its first medical director.
His own educational experience and clinical expertise enabled him to develop a program at the Institute that enhanced our 2 major objectives: education and research. Dr. Hall has been untiring in teaching medical and graduate students the nuances of cardiac murmurs and the fundamentals of physical diagnosis, with emphasis on observation and direct inquiry of the patient. His annual symposia on the identification and appreciation of heart sounds and murmurs have attracted renowned speakers and physicians from a wide area. He has repeatedly been cited by students and fellows in cardiology as their most outstanding and dedicated teacher.
Dr. Hall's reputation as a clinical cardiologist increased steadily because of his meticulous attention to diagnosis and treatment, and because he kept abreast of new developments in medical practice. A strong early proponent of precise diagnosis, especially through the development of coronary arteriography, he also has advocated aggressive myocardial revascularization by surgical and interventional techniques.
While at the Institute and St. Luke's Hospital, he has served as a member and often as chairman of many committees and projects essential to these organizations. He has enjoyed his teaching appointments at our affiliated medical schools, Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Texas Medical School at Houston, and has been actively involved in the American Heart Association. Since his retirement as clinical director of the Texas Heart Institute, he has conscientiously supported his successor, Dr. James Willerson, and has continued as director of medical education.
We will long be grateful to Bob for his many contributions to the growth and development of these institutions, and will remember him also as a personal confidant, advisor, colleague, and friend.
–DAC
The journal that Dr. Hall inherited 20 years ago would not be recognized by most of today's readers. His first issue was the first to be published under the Texas Heart Institute Journal name. (Its predecessor, Cardiovascular Diseases, Bulletin of the Texas Heart Institute, had been about the size of Reader's Digest—designed to slip into the pocket of a lab coat.) Under Dr. Hall's editorship, the Journal underwent 2 evolutionary transformations in appearance and a good many less apparent, but more profound, changes in content and method of distribution.
The original purpose of Cardiovascular Diseases was to offer expedited publication, chiefly to our fellows, of research and clinical findings at the Institute. Yet from the outset, there were also generous contributions of work by staff physicians and by visiting physicians from all parts of the world. To his credit, Dr. Hall continued to welcome national and international authors. The result has been that well over half of the articles in any given issue now come from outside the Texas Heart Institute, and many from outside the United States. No mere “hospital journal,” we truly have become an international forum, with readers and contributors in every state and territory and in 93 other countries.
A decade ago, while under Dr. Hall's watch, the Journal received notification of its acceptance for indexing in Index Medicus and MEDLINE, beginning with the 1993 issues. Subsequently, 3 electronic full-text versions have become available (from 2000 forward) in either SGML or PDF format at the Ovid, EBSCO Publishing, and (most recently) PubMed Central sites. Indeed, PubMed Central (the new full-text companion to PubMed) is now in the process of scanning all our back issues (from the January 1974 issue of Cardiovascular Diseases) to create a permanent, searchable, PDF archive. Soon, those early contributors who so kindly consigned their work to an “unindexed” journal won't have to wait for heaven to receive their rewards.
Most of all, Dr. Hall has been steadfast in his support of the Journal, and always there when we needed him. We shall miss him.
–JEB
Figure. Robert J. Hall, MD