Dorothy was a pioneer in pediatric anatomy and pathology. During her research career, she studied many children who had digestive or breathing problems and also performed autopsies on those who died from these problems.
In 1938, while performing autopsies, she noticed many of the patients who had died from celiac disease had fluid-filled cysts that were surrounded by scars on the pancreas. She also found similar scars and tissue damage in the lungs and concluded that the lung and pancreas damage came from the same disease, which she called "cystic fibrosis of the pancreas."
In 1942, Andersen developed the first efficient diagnostic test for cystic fibrosis with Paul di Sant'Agnese at Babies Hospital. Read her remarkable story here.
