The Early Days of Open Cardiac Surgery

Abstract

I can well remember as a house surgeon in 1948 how amazed we were that surgeons could pass a finger through the wall of the beating heart and split a stenosed mitral valve or even dilate a narrowed pulmonary valve. In those far-off days, mitral stenosis as a late result of carditis secondary to rheumatic fever was a common condition in this country, and large numbers of extremely ill young men and women were restored to health following their successful mitral valvotomy surgery. During World War II, missiles embedded within the heart had been removed with success. However, by 1950 it was obvious that any future progress would depend on being able to stop the heart and to operate directly on the quiet, empty organ. How to do this, when it was well known that depriving the brain of blood for four to five minutes would mean irreparable damage to the vital centres and inevitable death of the patient?