Yesterday – UMMC Celebrates 200 Years in 2023 | University of Maryland Medical Center

old black and white drawing of the infirmary building — The Baltimore Infirmary was the country's first hospital built specifically to teach medical students*
View our Flickr album with more historic photos.

The University of Maryland Medical Center is one of the nation's oldest teaching hospitals. Founded nearly two hundred years ago by the physician faculty of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, UMMC opened its doors as the Baltimore Infirmary in 1823.

In 1850, the hospital grew to 150 beds, the largest hospital in Baltimore at the time. As the hospital continued to expand, the focus remained on bedside teaching and in 1934, physicians moved into a twelve-story tower on Greene Street.

Today, UMMC is one hospital with two campuses: the UMMC Downtown Campus at the original location and, just a mile's walk north, the UMMC Midtown Campus on Linden Street, where the former Maryland General Hospital stood.

A Leader in Advanced Care

Over the last 200 years, UMMC has pioneered innovations and first-of-its-kind advancements including: old black and white photo of the UMMC building

2023 – First in the world to repair acute type A aortic dissection (ATAAD) involving aortic root via a complete endovascular replacement known as the Endo-Bentall procedure
2023 – First in Maryland to perform robotic heart surgery
2022 – First successful transplant of porcine heart into adult human with end-stage heart disease
2020 – First in Maryland to provide centralized, comprehensive care for adults with autism, epilepsy, and intellectual disabilities
2019 – First in the world to use of a drone/unmanned aircraft to carry an organ for transplantation (kidney)
2019 – First in the U.S. to treat a patient with focused ultrasound for bilateral essential tremor
2019 – First in Maryland Heart-Lung transplant in a pediatric patient
2019 – First in Maryland to perform aortic valve surgery with an improved tissue valve that lasts two to three times longer than other valves and does not require daily blood thinners
2018 – First in the U.S. to open the blood-brain barrier to treat brain cancer with chemotherapy
2018 – First in the U.S. to open the blood-brain barrier in a patient with infiltrating glioma/brain tumor
2018 – First in the U.S. to treat chronic pain with focused ultrasound
2018 – First in the Baltimore/Washington area to offer CAR-T cell therapy for B cell lymphomas
2018 – First in the world to create and use GammaPod™ to treat early-stage breast cancer with less radiation to healthy tissue
2018 – First to offer both deep-tissue external hyperthermia therapy in combination with high-precision proton-beam radiotherapy in the same facility
2016 – First in Maryland STEM cell use in pediatrics
2015 – First in the U.S. to treat a patient with focused ultrasound-guided pallidotomy for Parkinson's disease
2013 – First in the world to create and use the HARPOON™ System that enables minimally invasive beating-heart mitral valve repair
2012 – First in the world to complete the most comprehensive full face transplant
2007 – First in Maryland to offer a newly approved artificial cervical disc to patients with degenerative disc disease in the neck
2007 – First in Maryland to perform combined heart and liver transplant
2006 – First in the Mid-Atlantic region to perform minimally invasive, beating heart, multiple-vessel coronary artery bypass surgery with the assistance of a surgical robot
2006 – Hair, Heart and Health was developed, a program initiated by UMMC cardiologist Dr. Elijah Saunders that received international attention and continues to train barbers and hairstylists to pre-screen their clients for hypertension, and make referrals for medical care
2005 – First in the world to develop aromatase inhibitors, a new class of drugs used worldwide, that help prevent a recurrence of breast cancer in post-menopausal women by limiting the amount of estrogen their bodies produce
2005 – First in U.S. to have performed 1,000 minimally invasive kidney removals from living kidney donors
2004 – Maryland's first accredited Primary Stroke Center
2000 – First in world to develop compact system that works similarly to V-V extracorporeal mechanical oxygenation (ECMO), small enough to permit ambulation
1996 – First Center for Celiac Disease
1977 – Created the state's first neonatal intensive care unit (NICU)
1968 – The world's first Shock Trauma Center
1965 – Elijah Saunders, MD, became Maryland's first Black cardiologist when he completed his fellowship at UMMC

^{*Photograph from Historical Collections, Health Sciences and Human Services Library, University of Maryland, Baltimore.}