Dr. Beverly Britt passed away peacefully on October 25, 2016 at her house in Wales, close to her beloved garden, after a courageous battle with cancer. Former professor of anesthesia at the University of Toronto, Dr. Britt was an internationally recognized authority on malignant hyperthermia (MH). She also worked as an anesthesiologist at Toronto General Hospital (1960-1996). While caring for a patient who survived an MH event during the early 1960s, she recognized how little was known about MH at the time and embarked on a career of clinical and epidemiologic studies of this potentially fatal syndrome. She partnered with a well-known Canadian pharmacologist, Werner Kalow (1917-2008), to develop a preoperative diagnostic test to detect MH susceptibility. Their research was the basis for the North American caffeine-halothane contracture test and the European in vitro contracture test that are currently performed in MH centers around the world.

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Dr. Beverly Britt before her retirement from the Malignant Hyperthermia Investigation Unit (Toronto General Hospital) in 1996

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Dr. Britt introduced and worked with a porcine model of MH to better understand MH triggers and recognize the early signs of MH. She established the MH Investigation Unit in Toronto that became the first MH diagnostic center in the world. She organized and held the first international conference on MH in Toronto in 1971 and was an enthusiastic organizer and participant of many other international meetings that focused on MH. Her numerous papers on MH etiology and pathophysiology contain an enormous amount of meticulously collected data and remain a source of stimulating ideas for new generations of MH researchers. Dr. Britt delivered numerous talks and lectures all over the world, raising awareness of MH and stimulating the creation of MH diagnostic centers in Europe and the United States. She retired in 1996, but the MH Investigative Unit at the Toronto General Hospital that she founded continues to be one of the leading MH diagnostic and research centers in the world. Dr. Beverly Britt devoted her life to unraveling the biochemical and genetic causes of MH. As a result of her many contributions to the field, she remains a legend in the MH world.

She was cremated in Wales. She asked in her will that memorial donations be given to the Malignant Hyperthermia Education Research Innovation Fund at Toronto General Hospital, MH Investigation Unit (323-200 Elizabeth Street, Toronto, ON M5G 2C4; http://pie.med.utoronto.ca/mh/MH_content/donate.html).