Arthur J Moss

Cardiologist whose research saved countless lives

Arthur J Moss, a researcher who was credited with saving countless patients from fatal cardiac disorders, including a rare genetic heart glitch that can kill suddenly, died on 14 February at his home in Brighton, New York, aged 86. The cause was cancer.

As an intern at Massachusetts General Hospital he planned to specialise in blood disorders. But for some reason, the Navy, on drafting him, thought he was a cardiologist.

Assigned to teach flight surgeons how to interpret electrocardiograms, Moss read up on the subject and embraced cardiology. In 1959 he served on a Navy team that monitored the heart rhythms of one of two monkeys that were sent into space and then safely returned after a 16-minute flight. The monkey, a female named Baker, survived for years. “Our successful experience with monkey Baker set the stage for the human astronaut spaceflight programme,” Moss wrote in 2016.

In 1970, as a cardiologist at the University of Rochester Medical Centre, a woman in her forties was referred because she had mysteriously been fainting, once while bowling. After diagnosing a malfunction in the heart’s electrical system called long QT syndrome (LQTS), Moss helped develop a surgical treatment that blocked the signals to her heart from one side of her brain. Electrical impulses from the other side let her heart beat normally. The woman, Ruth Pontera, is now 88.

His work on LQTS led Moss to establish a global registry in 1979 that identified people with a high risk of death from the disorder and how to treat them. The registry allowed researchers to identify risk factors, enabling doctors to make early diagnoses. New York Times 2018.