Word: aorta
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...lung, a tube was slipped into the upper left side of the heart. This drew blood out of the heart to the six-cylinder pump, where fingerlike rubber pistons boosted it on its way. From the pump another tube led the pulsing blood back to the patient's aorta, where it would normally be leaving the heart...
...Service helped with funds. The valve, as perfected, is made of Plexiglas and contains a float the size of a mothball which rises and slips into one of three sockets in the side of the valve sleeve on the heart's upbeat, when blood is forced into the aorta. When the heart relaxes between beats, the ball falls into a seat and stops blood from leaking back into the heart...
Though the whole operation (under sodium pentothal and nitrous oxide anesthesia) lasted 2½ hours, most of that time was taken up in getting to the aorta. Then Dr. Hufnagel cut the aorta a few inches from the heart and fitted the loose ends of the aorta to the ends of the plastic valve sleeve. Like a plumber putting an extra valve in a water line, he left the old, defective valve in place. This part of the operation took only five minutes, and the blood flow to the brain was never interrupted...
...done it four or five times. It leaked out, anyway. They still cannot tell whether the plastic valve can be used in other types of heart disease. All they will say now is that they expect it to be a big help in many cases of damage to the aorta caused by rheumatic fever. (The exceptions: the very young, the feeble and the aged.) There are thousands of such cases in the U.S. each year...
...heart patient has a bottleneck in the mitral valve, it can be opened with a tiny knife on the end of the surgeon's finger. But this daring operation will do little good if the valve to the aorta (main artery) is also narrowed, and there has been no way to repair this second defect. Dr. Charles P. Bailey of Philadelphia, who developed the first operation, now has another for opening the aortic valve: he pushes piano wire into the valve through the heart, and uses it as a guide for a spreader which opens the valve...