Page 3 - CBAC Newsletter 2017

Jerome Liebman, M.D. George F. Van Hare, M.D.
is the Louis Larrick Ward
1927 - 2016 Professor of Pediatrics,
By George F. Van Hare, MD Washington University School
of Medicine
This year, we lost Dr. Jerome Liebman. I knew him as a mentor, a colleague, and
as my child’s cardiologist. I first met Dr. Liebman in 1979, as a visiting fourth year
medical student at Case Western Reserve University, doing a pediatric
cardiology elective. Before those two months, pediatric cardiology was not on my
radar screen, but Dr. Liebman taught me the power of physical examination, as
well as the importance of the ECG (never “EKG”). He was famous for criticizing
“pattern-readers” and felt that to read an ECG properly, you had to start by
understanding what was actually going on. This led directly to vectorcardiograms
and ultimately, body surface mapping. As a pediatric resident, I did a research
project with Jerry, looking at a total of 381 infants with Ventricular Septal Defect
(VSD) who had been catheterized twice in the first year of life. This being Jerry’s
cardiology program, they all had serial ECGs and vectorcardiograms, and I got to
re-interpret them all, with his guidance. Even now, when I look at an ECG,
I automatically visualize the vector loop in frontal and horizontal planes.

Dr. Liebman in fact had a longstanding interest in a particular congenital heart
abnormality, ventricular septal defect. In a lot of ways, the problem of VSDs in
infants is a Rosetta stone for a lot of pediatric cardiology, as understanding the
natural history of that defect and resultant problems with heart failure and
pulmonary hypertension teaches you a lot about how congenital heart disease
works. After eight years in San Francisco, in 1993, my wife and I had decided to
move back to Cleveland. Our third child Christopher had been born with a large
VSD and so Jerry became our cardiologist (of course). At our first visit to the clinic,
Dr. Liebman made no assumptions about what I and my physician-wife might know
about this particular problem, and walked us through the anatomy, physiology, and
treatment options step by step as he would with any new family...and we got our
very own box diagram as well. Fortunately, the defect got smaller and eventually
disappeared, just as Jerry had said it would.

Dr. Liebman was immensely influential to me personally and to countless trainees,
patients and families. I believe I have absorbed a lot of his enthusiasm for the
specialty and in particular for arrhythmias and ECG interpretation. I can only hope
to do as well as him when I talk with worried parents about their child’s heart
condition. Jerry was a wonderful teacher, mentor, physician and scientist and I’ll
miss him.