Word: aortic
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...strand steel wire for stiffening. As in the Syracuse housewife's case, polyethylene tubing is slipped over the steel spring. But in her case, the doctors did not go beyond the aorta. Now they go around the aorta's arch (see diagram) to its end at the aortic valve-the blood's exit from the left ventricle...
Great Advance. By pulling back an inch or two of the stiffening wire, they leave some of the spring pressing against the aortic valve. When the valve's leaves open to let blood out, the tensed spring pushes through, taking the polyethylene tube with it. With the end of this tube in the ventricle, the spring is withdrawn. Diagnosticians can then take samples of blood for a variety of tests, check pressure inside the ventricle, and inject radiopaque dyes for X rays to reveal abnormal or damaged arteries...
...great men of its early days. Endocrinologist George W. Thorn and colleagues are still exploring the adrenals, gradually outlining the role of a recently discovered and potent but little-understood hormone, aldosterone. Dr. Harken is working with famed Scientist Vannevar Bush on plastic valves which may actually replace the aortic valve in patients with some kinds of heart damage...
...pushes the blood 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...
...Leaky valves, particularly the aortic. At Georgetown University Hospital, Surgeon Charles Anthony Hufnagel has developed an ingenious solution: into the aortic channel he introduces an additional valve made of plastic, with a floating ball which stops the backflow when the heart relaxes. (Such valves used to tick like a clock inside the patient, are now silent because the ball is covered with silicone rubber.) The gadget does not prevent all backflow but stops enough to keep most patients' hearts from being overloaded...