Medicine: For a Dog's Life

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Each Thursday evening a chest surgeon from Hollywood (Fla.) Memorial Hospital scrubs up in a local operating room, lays bare a patient's heart and performs delicate—usually lifesaving—surgery on it. What makes these operations unusual is that they are performed at a veterinary hospital and the patients are dogs, victims of heartworms.

Dr. Myron Segal, 35, with an arm-long string of qualifications for human surgery, including the straight-to-the-heart type, got into the sideline of saving dogs' lives by accident. Where he had lived, in Montreal and Boston, heartworm was no problem. But in the South (where the worm larvae are carried by flies or mosquitoes), it afflicts many dogs. Caught soon after the animal begins to cough and wheeze, it can be treated with arsenical drugs. What interested Dr. Segal was the advanced cases, too far gone for drugs, which a vet drew to his attention.

In dogs that had died of the disease, Surgeon Segal found the heartworms nestled together in the pulmonary artery. Then he operated on live dogs from the pound. Again the worms were neatly concentrated, so he was able to cut out the mass and restore full blood flow through the artery. The operation, says Dr. Segal, is similar to that used to correct stenosis (narrowing) of the pulmonary artery in children. The work, therefore, affords valuable practice and may turn up information of value in human surgery. Since he rates it as research and not a medical service, Dr. Segal collects no fee even when the patient is a high-priced pet.