Word: aorta
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...four ascending arteries (two carotid, two vertebral) that carry blood toward the brain from the aorta's arch, just above the heart, are subject to the same types of disease as other major arteries, and they should, insisted Houston's famed surgeon Michael DeBakey (TIME, June 22, 1959), be treated the same way. If the disease is true hardening of the middle layer of the artery walls, surgery can do nothing about it. If the disease is atherosclerosis (not hardening, but clogging with fatty material), affecting only a short stretch of the ascending carotid or vertebral arteries...
...since childhood reported proudly last week that she is now able to fix one meal a day, and hopes soon to go back to her office job. The secret of her progress is embedded in her heart. It is like a miniature bird cage. At the point where the aorta (the body's main artery) begins, surgeons have removed part of nature's valve, which was diseased, and replaced it with an ingenious steel-and-plastic gadget...
...encased in a slim, steel-wire cage in which it can move freely up and down. This in turn is enclosed in a second cage. In a ten-hour operation recently, Surgeon Harken removed one leaflet of Mary Richardson's faltering valve. Into the slit in the aorta wall he stitched a piece of Ivalon sponge, to which the bird-cage valve was attached so that it snuggled into the heart-aorta junction. Mrs. Richardson's tissues grew into the sponge, making a firm union. The outer cage kept tissue from growing into the inner cage, where...