Sharon Hunt MD

Dr Sharon Hunt grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and attended undergraduate school at the University of Dayton.  She became interested in cardiology while working summers in a research lab at the Cleveland Clinic and she moved (with a one-way ticket) to California after being accepted by Stanford Medical School.  While there it was natural to continue her interest in cardiology and she worked in cardiology research during medical school looking at the effects of various drugs on heart muscle cells in tissue culture--a project that never led anywhere, but got her involved with the trainees and faculty in cardiology.  The first heart transplant was done at Stanford during her second year of medical school and the excitement was infectious.  By the time she finished cardiology fellowship the heart surgeons were looking for a few good cardiologists to provide long term care for the transplant recipients, who were beginning to survive for long periods of time.  She’s been with the program ever since and helped with many of the developments in the field which happened at Stanford during the decade of the 1970’s when there was an unofficial moratorium on doing heart transplants in the rest of the world.

On a personal side, she was married to a wonderful and supportive psychologist/househusband who helped raise a lovely daughter who is now a police officer in Sacramento, CA.  He, unfortunately, died in 2004.  Dr Hunt continues active clinical practice on the faculty and also is involved in a moderate amount of writing and editing, working with UpToDate and Hurst’s The Heart among others.