The Past 50 Years of Cardiovascular Surgery

Cardiovascular surgery has developed so rapidly that it ishard to believe that this specialty is little more than a half-century old. In fact, had it not been for World War II, the emergence of modern cardiac surgery may have been delayed further. In 1943 and 1944, Dwight Harken,1 then a captain in the medical corps, successfully removed foreign bodies from in and around the hearts of.100 soldiers who had been injured in battle. Harken’s work helped overcome the notion that the heart could not be surgically manipulated and, not only did it pave the way for the incredible progress of the last 50 years, it was a catalyst for the event that would mark the dawn of this era: the creation of the first Blalock-Taussig shunt for treating tetralogy of Fallot in 1944.2 The striking results from this procedure, which increased the circulation through the pulmonary arterial system, caused much excite-ment in the surgical community.