This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Request Permissions Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Cohn, L. H. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Cohn, L. H. Pubmed/NCBI databases Medline Plus Health Information Heart Surgery Related Collections CV surgery: other Pediatric and congenital heart disease, including cardiovascular surgery

(Circulation. 2003;107:2168.)
© 2003 American Heart Association, Inc.

Editorial

Fifty Years of Open-Heart Surgery

Lawrence H. Cohn, MD

From Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, Mass.

Correspondence to Lawrence H. Cohn, MD, Division of Cardiac Surgery, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, 75 Francis St, Boston, MA 02115. E-mail lcohn@partners.org

Key Words: Editorials • heart-lung machine, history • surgery • research

An extract of the first 250 words of the full text is provided, because this article has no abstract.

On May 6th, 2003, we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first successful open-heart operation performed with the use of the heart-lung machine, one of the most important forms of therapy in the history of cardiac disease. On that spring day in Philadelphia, John H. Gibbon, Jr, MD, of the Jefferson University Medical Center, using total cardiopulmonary bypass for 26 minutes, closed a large secundum atrial septal defect in an 18-year-old woman. Beginning with this case, generations of cardiac surgeons have been able to operate on millions of human hearts with alacrity, efficiency, and consistency to correct complicated congenital heart defects, cardiac valve disorders in the young and old, atherosclerotic coronary artery obstructions, and large aneurysms of the thoracic aorta.

Until 1953, cardiac surgery was in its infancy and was more of a curiosity, except for treatment of rheumatic mitral stenosis, beginning in 1923 with Cutler’s successful case of a closed mitral commissurotomy with a tenotomy knife at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston.¹ The only successful heart operations done before 1953 were closed techniques for mitral stenosis,² a few clinical experiments in 1952 with "open" heart by deep hypothermic arrest by John Lewis at the University of Minnesota,³ and the "blue-baby" operations of the 1940s and 1950s.⁴

It is not a fluke that John Gibbon was the first to do this procedure. He had studied and worked tirelessly on this project for 23 years before the first successful application. Dr Gibbon, who would have also celebrated his one-hundredth . . . [Full Text of this Article]

This article has been cited by other articles:

				Anticoagulation for cardiopulmonary bypass: is a replacement for heparin on the horizon? J. Thorac. Cardiovasc. Surg., March 1, 2006; 131(3): 515 - 516.

				J. H. Newman Pulmonary Hypertension Am. J. Respir. Crit. Care Med., November 1, 2005; 172(9): 1072 - 1077. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				J. S. Child Fallot's tetralogy and pregnancy: Prognostication and prophesy J. Am. Coll. Cardiol., July 7, 2004; 44(1): 181 - 183. [Full Text] [PDF]

				S. Z. Goldhaber, E. S. Nadel, M. E. King, and A. Sharma Case 17-2004 - A 42-Year-Old Woman with Cardiac Arrest Several Weeks after an Ankle Fracture N. Engl. J. Med., May 27, 2004; 350(22): 2281 - 2290. [Full Text] [PDF]

				Minerva BMJ, May 15, 2003; 326(7398): 1096 - 1096. [Full Text] [PDF]