Medicine: Affair of the Heart

As a boy in Park Rapids, Minn., Richard Russell could not run and play like other kids; if he had, he might have had heart failure. His trouble was diagnosed by the family doctor as a narrowing of the aorta, the great trunk artery from the heart. Now 20, and living in Pacoima, Calif., Richard Russell had even been warned not to marry, though he was engaged to Gloria Spires, 19.

Last week, Russell was wheeled into an operating room at Los Angeles County Hospital. Above the table hung a television camera. Surgeon John C. Jones wore a microphone on his throat and a "bug" earphone. As Dr. Jones peeled away the patient's fifth rib, Richard's mother, stepfather and sweetheart, in a nearby room, watched on a color TV set; so did 650 delegates to A.M.A. meetings in Los Angeles' Shrine Auditorium. Thanks to transcontinental CBS relays, other physicians, including Richard's old family doctor, Walter W. Higgs, watched in Chicago and New York City.

Dr. Jones stripped off the covering of the aorta. He put clamps above and below the narrowed section of the artery, and then cut it out. Its internal diameter (half an inch in a normal aorta) was scarcely big enough to admit a matchstick. Dr. Jones sewed the severed ends of the aorta together, closed the wound.

Surgeon George H. Humphreys, 3,000 miles away, spoke into Dr. Jones's right ear: "From New York it looks fine, John."

In Chicago Dr. Higgs said: "Very well done. I could follow it nicely."

Said Richard's mother: "I didn't think I could watch, but I'm glad I did."

The show was a success, and so was the operation. This week, Richard Russell was on the mend and making wedding plans. Moreover, said he, "for the first time since I can remember, my feet are warm."