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(Circulation. 2000;102:IV-87.)
© 2000 American Heart Association, Inc.

Special Anniversary Issue

The Past 50 Years of Cardiovascular Surgery

Denton A. Cooley, MD; O. H. Frazier, MD

From the Texas Heart Institute at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital, Houston, Texas.

Correspondence and reprint requests to Dr Denton A. Cooley, Texas Heart Institute, PO Box 20345, Houston, TX 77225. E-mail dcooley@heart.thi.tmc.edu

Key Words: heart diseases • surgery • cardiopulmonary bypass

Cardiovascular surgery has developed so rapidly that it is hard to believe that this specialty is little more than a half-century old. In fact, had it not been for World War II, the emergence of modern cardiac surgery may have been delayed further. In 1943 and 1944, Dwight Harken,¹ then a captain in the medical corps, successfully removed foreign bodies from in and around the hearts of >100 soldiers who had been injured in battle. Harken’s work helped overcome the notion that the heart could not be surgically manipulated and, not only did it pave the way for the incredible progress of the last 50 years, it was a catalyst for the event that would mark the dawn of this era: the creation of the first Blalock-Taussig shunt for treating tetralogy of Fallot in 1944.² The striking results from this procedure, which increased the circulation through the pulmonary arterial system, caused much excitement in the surgical community.

In those early days at the midpoint of the 20th century, many warned about operating on children, particularly those with cardiovascular disease, severe cyanosis, and hypoxia. There was great concern that it would not be possible to anesthetize these young patients safely and to see them through an operation. Helen Taussig believed that one should not try to operate on a child younger than 4 years with tetralogy of Fallot or a child younger than 8 years with an aortic coarctation. Many pediatricians heeded these warnings, and it was with enormous trepidation that . . . [Full Text of this Article]