Word: aorta
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...through the pulmonary valve and pulmonary artery to the lungs to pick up fresh oxygen. Reddened blood returns to the left auricle, passes through the mitral valve into the left ventricle. This most muscular of the heart's chambers sends it pulsing through the aortic valve into the aorta, the great artery trunk of which all other arteries are but branches. In the case of Surgeon Bailey's patient, this smooth mechanism was dangerously out of kilter...
...auricle wall; one assistant slid a plastic tube through it into the lower great vein, and another drew the purse string tight to check bleeding. Another cut, another tube, for the upper great vein. A third tube, through the side of the subclavian artery into the aorta...
...Wrong. An alarming number of things can be wrong with the heart to require surgery. Some defects may be present in a child's heart or great vessels at birth (estimated annual U.S. incidence: 30,000 to 80,000 births). The great vessels (pulmonary artery and aorta) may be transposed, not harmful during fetal life but usually fatal soon after birth. Often there is a hole in the wall (septum) between the auricles or between the ventricles; there may be a hole permitting all four heart chambers to communicate. The aorta may override (straddle) both right and left ventricles...
...Boston's Dr. Robert Edward Gross, then 33, operated successfully to eliminate a patent ductus arteriosus-a tubular connection between pulmonary artery and aorta that normally closes soon after birth. Falling back on Alexis Carrel's brilliant experiments in the early 1900s, which showed that arteries if handled properly can be cut apart and stitched together again, with or without an intervening graft, Gross next developed an operation to cut out an abnormal narrowing (coarctation) of the aorta...
Three to Watch. By one method or another, heart surgeons can now correct an impressive number of defects, including patent ducts, narrowing of the aorta, aneurysms (ballooning blisters) of the aorta, holes between the walls of either auricles or ventricles, scarred and narrowed valves. Three problems are getting special attention...