1954

At Minnesota, John Lewis fails to repair VSD (ventricular septal defect) via hypothermia and bows out of open-heart surgery (Miller, 111-13). On March 24, Lillehei repairs VSD on baby Gregory Glidden using cross circulation (with the father) but lost the patient on 6 April owing to postsurgical pneumonia (125-39). Later in April, he operated on two more children with VSD using cross-circulation and was successful with eight of his next 11 patients. But from Sept to mid-Nov, only one of seven cross-circulation patients lived (141-52). On Oct 5, 1954, one of his donors (the patient’s mother) was neurologically damaged when the anesthesiologist subjected her to an air embolism (156-58). In March, 1955, Lillehei successfully repaired a 13-year-old black boy’s VSD using a dog lung for cross circulation (after state penitentiary inmates failed to provide a donor as “none would let a black man’s blood mingle with his.” Lillehei deployed dog lung in another 12 cases, with mixed results (162-64). “Dog lung, self-lung, arterial reservoir, cross-circulation – none was ideal for open heart surgery” (164).