Medicine: Surgery in the Heart

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Instead of the Kolff lung, the Houston team used a bubble oxygenator, which pumps oxygen into a column of blood withdrawn from the body. (The methods of taking the blood in and out of the body, and pumping it, are similar in the two techniques.) When Dr. Cooley opened the heart, he found that the hole was the size of a half-dollar—too big to close by simple stitching. It needed a blowout patch. With the heart still beating, but relatively free of blood so that he could see what he was doing, Dr. Cooley took a piece of plastic sponge and stitched it over the hole. Then, as he sewed the outer wall of the heart together, he let blood flow back through it. The blood shut-off had lasted 21 minutes, during which the severely damaged heart had not missed a beat. The whole operation took five hours. Said a Cooley colleague: "This is the ultimate in heart surgery—the achievement we have been waiting for. It is now possible to lay open the fine muscles of the heart—the wires, so to speak—control circulation, patch a blowout and then repair the muscles and restore circulation. We can now repair some of the most serious damage there can be to the adult human heart."