Word: aorta
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...DeBakey went H.R.H. the Duke of Windsor to have a potentially fatal, grapefruit-sized aneurysm removed from his abdominal aorta (TIME, Dec. 25). And it was to Dr. DeBakey and Houston's Methodist Hospital that the TV producers of the U.S. and Europe turned a month ago when they wanted to let 300 million televiewers, aided by Comsat's Early Bird, watch an exquisitely delicate heart operation, with the surgeon literally holding a life in his hand. To Dr. DeBakey both Presidents Kennedy and Johnson turned when they needed a man to head committees and commissions to recommend...
Widened Horizon. The artery disorders for which DeBakey and his colleagues have devised ever more daring surgical procedures fall into two main classes: blockages and aneurysms. Blockages may be almost anywhere-in the greatest vessel of all, the aorta, in the coronary arteries embedded in the heart wall itself, in arteries leading to the legs, and in the carotid and vertebral vessels carrying blood to the brain (see diagram, opposite page). The brain itself, however, is the province of the neurosurgeons...
...simpler than open-heart surgery is closure of a patent ductus arteriosus, the shunt that connects the aorta with the pulmonary artery in unborn infants. Normally, the duct closes automatically soon after birth. When it does not, the situation can be remedied either by tying the vessel shut or by cutting it and closing the ends. In major medical centers, mortality from these operations is near zero. But 777 hospitals offer to do them, and 232 hospitals have admitted a death rate of 3.6% from the first type of operation and 9.6% from the second...
Parts of major arteries, including the biggest of all, the aorta, are far easier to deal with. They are regularly replaced or bypassed with grafts of Dacron knit such as was used in surgery on the Duke of Windsor. Electrical pacemakers to regulate or replace the beat of a faltering heart have by now been implanted under the abdominal skin of 10,000 patients, with leads to their hearts; all these devices are encased in Silastic because of its inertness...
...duke's lean abdominal wall, the surgeon discovered that the aneurysm was even bigger than expected. 'The size of a small cantaloupe or large grapefruit," he reported. Instead of a simple balloon shape with a neat "stalk," it was "fusiform," with its base extending along the aorta. Worse, the wall of the aorta had eroded until it was on the point of rupturing...