24 hours at Johns Hopkins

“Because your whole world can change in 24 hours.” – The Paper (1994)

Tuesday, November 28, 1944: Sometime during the evening of the 28th, Dr. Alfred Blalock places a telephone call to the Surgical Laboratory at Johns Hopkins Hospital. His Surgical Assistant, Vivien Thomas, has recently developed a surgical correction for the heart defect known as Tetralogy of Fallot, also known as Blue Baby Syndrome. The two men have planned for Thomas to teach Blalock the steps needed to successfully complete the surgery during an operation on a dog. Blalock has done the operation only once and many more teaching sessions are needed.

Blalock is calling with grim news: Earlier he had asked Thomas about the possibility of operating on 19 month old infant Eileen Saxon. Weighing only nine pounds and often cyanotic, the dusky blue color that gives this malady its name, she is deteriorating rapidly. At the moment she is so cyanotic that she is purple and is struggling for every breath. Dr. Blalock tells Thomas to meet with Elizabeth Sherwood, the operating room supervisor, first thing in the morning. Thomas has invented several surgical tools specifically for this operation and he is to make sure that they are available.

Thomas is stunned and reminds Blalock that he doesn’t know the operation very well. “But if you don’t get ahead of yourself, break it down into smaller and smaller steps as you work, it can be done.” It is one of the familiar sayings Thomas uses when he is teaching proper surgical procedure and for a moment, Blalock feels as if he is the assistant.

After Blalock hangs up, Dr. Helen Taussig orders him home. Blalock protests, but she reminds him that he plans to operate in the morning – an operation that could very well be emergency surgery. The hospital has his telephone number should he be needed during the night. At roughly the same time, Thomas and Blalock leave for their respective homes. Segregation is still prevalent at the time and Thomas leaves by a back entrance; neither man knows the other one has left.

Dr. Taussig spends the night on the ward; Eileen’s parents are also there. Although they don’t know it, this is an ominous sign: in the 1940’s, visiting hours rules were strictly enforced unless a patient was seriously ill.

Wednesday, November 29, 1944: Too nervous to drive, Blalock asks his wife Mary to take him to the hospital. She lets him out of the car in front of the towering Johns Hopkins dome. Dr. Blalock enters the building, walks through the rotunda (rubbing the toe of the Statue of Christ for luck, an old Hopkins tradition) and turns left. From here he exits the building through a side door, walks approximately 50 yards, and into the Harriet Lane Home for Invalid Children. Vivien Thomas enters the Hopkins complex from a side entrance and goes immediately to Elizabeth Sherwood’s office. Miss Sherwood knows nothing about Dr. Blalock’s plan to operate but immediately shows Thomas the selection of items that will be available to Dr. Blalock. Thomas adds custom-made clamps and needles to the collection. These needles are no more than 1/2 inch long. Thomas insists that the clamps and needles not become part of the general operating room supplies – they have been custom made for this operation only.

Blalock and Taussig examine the child and confer. Eileen has not improved during the night, and Taussig concedes that there is nothing else that she can do. She leaves the meeting as Thomas arrives, perhaps to return to Eileen’s bedside or for a quick trip to the Cafeteria. Blalock and Thomas discuss the upcoming operation. They go over some of the more critical steps, and also discuss “routine” points such as where the incision should be made. Thomas informs him that Miss Sherwood has promised that the large operative theatre will be available but needs to know when the operation will begin. Blalock decides that the operation will take place after the morning rounds, unless events dictate otherwise. He leaves to confer with Eileen’s parents and to conduct Rounds. Thomas did not normally participate in Rounds so he would have gone to the Surgical Lab, although he may have gone to his office. He calls Miss Sherwood and informs her of Blalock’s decision.

The operative team convenes in the Scrub Room annex connected to Room 706. Although first chosen at random, the majority of Hopkins’ early heart surgeries will take place here and the room will come to be known as “The Heart Room.” Dr. William Longmire and Dr. Denton Cooley will assist. An unknown person sets up a movie camera pointed at the operating room table; this film still exists in the Johns Hopkins Hospital Archives.

Blalock continues to discuss the upcoming operation with Thomas as he prepares for surgery. Thomas is not scrubbed in and has no intention to – he is not allowed on the Operating Room floor. He will be seated in the raised seats of the theatre, however. Helen Taussig will be in the Operating Room, even though she is not a surgeon. She’ll spend most of her time at the head of the table, monitoring the patient.

A few minutes before Eileen arrives, Blalock quietly asks his scrub nurse to find Thomas and help him get scrubbed in. As expected, Thomas is seated in the bleachers above the OR. Blalock also orders a milk crate and has it placed behind him. Thomas stands on the crate, peering over Blalock’s shoulder at the operative field.

The operation begins with a curving incision near the 4th rib on the child’s left side. With Thomas guiding him, Blalock gently works past the lung and cuts a path to the heart. The heart is small, dark, and obviously struggling. William Longmire later said “I remember watching him open the patient and just thinking it was impossible.”

Blalock works patiently, finding the Left Subclavian Artery and the left branch of the Pulmonary Artery. He places a clamp on the Subclavian to cut off blood flow – using one of the clamps designed by Vivien Thomas for this procedure – and cuts it. He then places two similar clamps on the left branch of the Pulmonary Artery. Making a small opening in the Pulmonary Artery, Blalock uses the tiny needles Thomas has prepared to sew the Subclavian Artery into the Pulmonary Artery. After double checking his work, Blalock removes the clamps. He is unable to feel blood flowing through the new connection.

Legend has it that Helen Taussig said “Al, the child’s lips are a lovely pink color!” The Johns Hopkins online exhibit about the operation states that the anesthesiologist said “The boy’s a lovely color now!” at a later date, during the third operation. Blalock’s operative notes comment that the circulation in the nail beds of Eileen’s left hand “appeared to be fairly good.”

The difficult segments are complete but the operation is far from over. Sulfanilamide (an antibiotic) is introduced into the incision and Blalock begins to close. He sews the soft tissue closed with silk sutures and is finally done. The operation has taken about ninety minutes. (CLICK HERE to perform the Blalock-Taussig Procedure yourself. Read Blalock’s operative notes here:  PAGE 1 PAGE 2)

Eileen is moved to the Recovery Room, where Dr. Henry Bahnson is responsible for her care. As one might expect, Blalock and Taussig look in on her often.  Bahnson’s opinion is that the little girl is still very blue but improves over time. Eileen’s mother comments “When I saw Eileen for the first time, it was like a miracle… I was beside myself with happiness.” Very little is known of Thomas’ movements after the operation. He is seen in Recovery and also in his Lab.

As the sun sets on the city of Baltimore, Eileen remains in critical condition but she is stable. The operation is a success, but in a few months it will fail and she will need another Blalock-Taussig Procedure, this time on her right side. She will die just before her 3rd  birthday.  The doctors determine that the surgery is more suited to an older child whose blood vessels have had a chance to grow. In early 1945 Blalock and Taussig co-authored a medical journal article about the first three procedures. Hundreds of patients would flock to Johns Hopkins Hospital to receive the life-saving surgery, even though the odds were long: an article in the February 17, 1947 issue of The American Weekly noted that 14 of the first 70 patients had died.

But parents noted that 56 of them had lived and were growing up, something that had never happened before. The era of Congenital Cardiac Surgery has begun.

Celebrate Red and Blue Day

“What sort of day was it? A day like all days, filled with those events that alter and illuminate our times…” – You Are There, 1953

November 29, 1944: Dr. Alfred Blalock took one final look into the incision. It looked right… he had been operating for years, surgery shouldn’t make him nervous anymore. But this operation did. He had completed this same surgery on a dog only once, and no one had ever tried it on a human before. Let this work…

“Watch for bleeding,” his assistant reminded him as he started to remove the clamp. Blalock nodded, ready to drop the clamp back into place if the new connection leaked. But not too hard, too much pressure and you crush the Pulmonary Artery; do that and you kill the patient.

His partner, Dr. Helen Taussig, stood near the head of the table. Heart surgery had been her idea, she had just as much riding on this operation as he did. Probably more – she had assured both him and the child’s parents that the theory behind this operation was sound. The little girl’s heart defect caused Cyanosis – she was literally suffocating from lack of oxygen. Taussig’s theory was to reroute a blood vessel to the lung and increase the amount of oxygenated blood available. Blalock’s assistant, Vivien Thomas, had designed the operation and tested it. All three of them had their reputations on the line.

And the irony of it all was if things went bad, he’d probably be the one to suffer least. Blalock was the Chief of Surgery, after all. Taussig was an almost deaf female doctor (who ever heard of such a thing?) and Thomas was a Black man who official job description wasn’t supposed to bring him anywhere near a scalpel, much less doing experimental surgery. If things went wrong, they would be the ones hung out to dry.

So let’s not allow things to go wrong, Blalock thought as he inspected his work again. “I’m removing the clamps,” he finally said.

Reaching into the open wound, he gently touched the new connection. “I can’t feel any flow,” Blalock said, disappointed. After a long pause, Taussig spoke.

“Al, the baby’s lips are a glorious pink color.” Stunned, the surgeon watched as the child’s blue lips slowly turned pink.

Before that day in 1944 heart defects were almost always fatal, usually during the first year of life. Occasionally a child was lucky enough to survive to late childhood or the early teens, but that was only under the best of circumstances. And that “lucky” child had no strength, no energy, and very little Quality of Life. Even after that first surgery (the Blalock-Taussig Shunt)  there was still only one operation, designed to relieve the effects of one heart defect. The odds weren’t good, but CHDers now had a chance. And sometimes one chance is all you need.

CHD Survivors, our families, and our friends celebrate November 29 as Red and Blue Day. Participating in Red and Blue Day is simple – just dress in red and blue clothing. You don’t have to donate any money (though if you choose to, your favorite CHD Support Group would be an excellent choice!) and you don’t have to volunteer to do anything. Simple as can be. If anyone compliments you on your good taste or your color scheme, just be prepared to explain why you chose those colors.

A Heart Defect is an Invisible Disability… many of us don’t even look like we have a health problem. Some of us are Cyanotic, but you have to look really close (and know what you are looking for) to see it. But November 29 is OUR DAY, so wear Red and Blue… and let’s stand out!

Good Nurses

NOTE TO READERS: We’re off on a Secret Mission tomorrow, so there may not be a post on Thursday. You’ll hear all about it later, though!

I was looking through my 1967 Johns Hopkins records and especially looking over the nurse reports. The nurse reports make up over half of my total file – neat sheets with handwritten measurements gathered at certain times. This was long before electronic records and most monitoring equipment. Nursing was really a hands on profession, not that it isn’t now. I’ve been cared for by some awesome people over the years, and a lot of them are nurses. You see and interact with the nurse a lot more than you do with the doctor, so when you are assigned a really good nurse it is a Great Thing and a Big Deal.

A big part of the job is observation and reporting, and in the ’60’s you were doing this constantly. There weren’t many automatic alarms that would go off when something was wrong; it was the nurse’s job to almost see problems coming. You were looking, observing, and making notes on every patient, so a good nurse had her head on a swivel. The nurses reports in my file I’ve nicknamed my “pee and poop sheets” because that was a major part of what was recorded: My temperature, amount taken in (input), amount expelled (output), and what I was doing at the time. Remember I was five months old; at any time of day I might be “playing”, “sleeping”, or more than likely, “crying”. Hey, I was a baby, and you people had just cut my chest open and tinkered around in there. You’d cry, too!

The order of the day was “Observe the patient.” You can almost hear the nursing department answer OK… what are we looking for? Trouble is, Cardiac Surgery was only about 25 years old then – they knew they had to prevent Pneumonia but after that, no one was really sure what to expect. So the Surgical Department just told them to observe the patient closely.

I had a fever on my 3rd day post-op. Hopkins called in a doctor who specialized in combating fever. “We see this a lot,” he told my parents. “Many patients spike a fever on the third day after their surgery, we don’t know why. If this is a 3 day fever, it will last about 24 hours and then it will disappear. We don’t know why that happens, either.” And he was correct – it was a 3 day fever, and it was gone 24 hours later. But he also told the nurses to keep a close eye on me, just in case it wasn’t a 3 day fever.

How do I know? The nurses report for that 24 hour period is crammed with notes. The best I can figure, they were checking on me every fifteen minutes for almost 30 hours.

Good nurses are lifesavers – literally!

 

 

 

On the cutting edge

Do you think my child needs one of those medical information bracelets? He had Transposition of the Great Arteries but his doctor said he was fixed after his surgery.

Yes, I would certainly get a Medical Information bracelet. I personally use MedicAlert, because you aren’t limited by whatever you can squeeze onto the bracelet. MedicAlert is a little more expensive – you have to pay for both the service and the jewelry – but you can have so much more information. I don’t just have a heart defect, I’m also in Heart Failure, you can’t read my pulse, my blood pressure, or give me an injection in my left arm because of my Blalock-Taussig shunt, and I take a small bucketful of medication every day. A “bracelet” that listed all that would be as long as my arm! (just try getting it through airport security!) With the MedicAlert bracelet, you discuss your detailed health information with a nurse over the phone and your bracelet comes with a telephone number and a numerical code. If something happens and you can’t speak, emergency personnel can call the number and enter the code, and they will have instant access to all of your information. Most of their bracelets are waterproof, so you can wear them in the shower – after all, it can’t do you much good if you have passed out in the bathroom and your bracelet is lying on your bedside table.

The Medical ID bracelet is important and could save your child’s life… but that isn’t the reason for today’s post. The second part of that statement made my hair stand up: He had Transposition of the Great Arteries but his doctor said he was fixed after his surgery.

Holy cow! Read this carefully, it is very important that it be understood: A heart defect can not be fixed. The word “fixed” implies that it is good as new. It isn’t. A heart can be repaired through surgery, which means that it can be made to function – perhaps not in the normal manner, but it is functional.

It is hard to believe that there are still doctors who tell Heart Parents that their kids are “good as new!” They used to tell them that, back when I was growing up – because they didn’t know any better. There weren’t that many Cardiac Kids around, so no one really had any idea what the future held for these children. But this child had been born with a critical health problem, had survived a delicate surgery, and would get better. He or she might not have as long or as full a life as the other kids, but we had won this battle. Now go, get out there and enjoy your life! And for years that was the common practice, because kids with heart problems didn’t live as long as other children. As an example, Cardiologists at Johns Hopkins Hospital told my parents that if I needed a second operation, it would probably have to happen ten years in the future. My parents asked what kind of surgery I would need, and after a long, uncomfortable pause the doctors admitted that they didn’t know. “That operation probably hasn’t been invented yet.”

But then something totally unexpected happened: Cardiac Kids grew up! As we grew, we had more heart problems – some of them related to our original defect, and some of them new. Doctors had new tools they could use to help us out, either a new drug or a better surgery. They could do a lot more with Catheterizations, too. And while we were proving that we could grow up, doctors were discovering that those heart problems were still popping up, sometimes years after we had been “fixed.” And their thinking started to change.

Today, most Cardiologists will tell you that your child’s heart has been repaired – and he or she will always need specialized cardiac care. Their heart is misshapen, blood vessels run the wrong way, it has holes where there shouldn’t be any, and has been altered by surgery. Even after they grow up, Heart Children will always have to make allowances, take medication, go see their Cardiologist, and stay on top of their health. And they will have to do this forever – because even though their heart is functional, it isn’t normal. No it isn’t fair, but this is the way it is.

And if your Cardiologist is telling you your child is “fixed”, you seriously need to consider finding another Cardiologist. Because this one is living in the past.

And Cardiac Kids live their lives right on the cutting edge of medical science. We always have, and we always will.

‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’

Monday, October 25:  Saint Crispin’s Day

This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian:’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day.

– from Henry V by William Shakespeare, 1599

…And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian’

If you are a fellow heart surgery Survivor, a Heart Parent, or just want to help rid the world of Congenital Heart Defects, feel free to link to Monday’s post. It will appear very late on the night of Sunday, October 24.

Traditions

One of my earliest memories is getting up very early in the morning and loading into the car for the long drive to see the doctors at Johns Hopkins. My parents were younger back then; with a little luck we could make the trip in one day. Just about sunrise we’d encounter a Stuckey’s Restaurant close to the North Carolina – Virgina state line. That was where we always stopped for breakfast, and the light blue roof became one of our landmarks. I looked forward to the restaurant, and the folks did too. Then one day…

…. one day, we came around the corner to find our favorite restaurant was now a pile of ashes! The only thing left, somehow, was the roof. It was pretty much intact, as if someone or something had gently removed it and set it aside before the restaurant burned, then returned it to its proper place.

Well, that’s not good. So we found breakfast somewhere else, and didn’t think anything about it until we got to Hopkins. There, we found out that my Cardiologist – arguably the best Cardiologist in the world – had left. Dr. Richard Rowe was now Head of Cardiology at a hospital in Canada.

No Stuckey’s, no doctor… these two events must be connected in some way, correct? And by the way, I am not superstitious!

I wear a pair of lucky socks whenever I have a doctor’s appointment. One day they’ll wear out, and I’ll rescue them from the trashcan. If I have to cut a small section out of the toe and stick it in my pocket, I will.

Why? At one appointment my doc looked at the EKG and his eyebrows shot up. That is never a good sign.

“You’ve developed an Atrial Fibrillation since your last appointment,” he said. Not good – A-Fib can lead to fainting or a stroke. And I was already taking Amiodarone to combat A-Fib, so apparently the Fibrillation had broken through.

“Double your Amiodarone and have an EKG test in two weeks. Have them fax us a copy. You may eventually have to have an ablation to try to knock that A-Fib down.”

Ablation – a catheter maneuvered inside of the heart with a probe on the end, designed to burn away the areas causing the out of sync heartbeats. Wonderful.

So two weeks passed, and I had the EKG done and faxed. Naturally, the EKG tech won’t even tell you the time of day, no matter how much you beg. But I got my answer that evening, when they called and told me I needed to come to the hospital for an appointment with the Electrophysiologist.

So the next week I was back, being examined by the specialist – wearing a new pair of socks. Didn’t bring that pair intentionally, just needed an extra pair and tossed them into my carry bag.

The doc hooked me up to a 12 lead EKG (the first one I had ever seen), listened with his stethoscope, and asked me several questions.

“So, how do you feel?”

“Worried about what you are going to find, but other than that, pretty good.”

“Tell me how you feel when you are having an episode.”

“Actually Doc, I can’t tell you. I don’t feel them.”

“Not at all?”

“No sir.”

He put the stethoscope back on my chest. “You are in A-Fib right now. Do you feel any different? Anything at all?”

“No sir,” I said.

He listened some more, and run another EKG. “I’m going to discuss this with your Cardiologist,” he said as he excused himself from the room.

In a few minutes he was back. “Since you don’t even feel it, and it doesn’t seem to be bothering you, I’m going to discontinue the Amiodarone. Get an EKG faxed to my office in two weeks. And if you feel light headed or more tired than usual, call me ASAP. But if it doesn’t bother you, I’m not going to medicate you for it.”

And with that we were out the door. The two-week EKG was acceptable and I felt fine, so all he told me to do was to discontinue the medication and come back for a routine checkup in one year. And ever since then, I walk into a doctor’s office wearing my lucky socks.

But I’m not superstitious…. what makes you think that? 🙂

What you need in a hospital

In an earlier post I discussed what we need in a Congenital Heart Surgeon. Reader Heather let the cat out of the bag by mentioning that wasn’t all you needed… you need a good hospital, too.

How true, how true. As I have said many times before, the doctor you need does not practice in a town of 5,000 people. There aren’t enough patients in the community to allow him or her to sharpen their skills. Skill partially depends on volume – you do something often, you do it right, and you evaluate your results (and you keep evaluating them, constantly). That’s the only way to improve. You learn from someone who is experienced, then you do it yourself, knowing that anything less than 100% is unacceptable. As you gain skill, you learn how to do it better and faster.

That same fact applies to the hospital. You can have the best surgeon that ever put on a mask; but if the hospital you are in has very little experience with caring for post surgical patients, there could be problems. That applies to the type of surgery you are having, not to all surgeries. Caring for someone who just had heart bypass surgery and someone who just had congenital heart surgery is a lot different. Studies prove that the more experience a facility has, the better the outcome.

I love my community hospital. We have about 150 beds and I’m on a first name basis with a lot of the people there. I know the doctors and the nurses not only from the hospital, but I see them in the community. I saw one of my favorite nurses in the grocery store just last week. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to let them do heart surgery on me – they don’t have the skills. They are well-meaning people and I am sure they would do their best, but if I had surgery there, I’d probably come home in a box. We can’t have that, I’m claustrophobic!

A few months ago there was a plan being considered by England’s National Health Service to consolidate the number of Pediatric Heart Hospitals. A good number of people were understandably upset but the reasoning is logical: some of the units performed a relatively small number of surgeries. Consolidating the number of centers may make it inconvenient for some, but it will make the overall results better.

For us here in the States, that probably means a trip to a large city hospital. There are exceptions – Durham, North Carolina  (the home of Duke University Hospitals) is fairly small and Rochester, Minnesota (Home of the Mayo Clinic) is also a small city. But in most cases, we’re heading to The Big City – New York, Los Angeles, Nashville, Boston, Birmingham, Kansas City, Denver, Atlanta. These are only some of the destinations whenever the Heart Warriors I know head to the doctor. “Medical Tourism” is all the rage right now, but to us its old news. The average Heart Warrior is also a Road Warrior; we’ll go to where the best hospitals and doctors are.

And in the words of that great philosopher, Bruce Hornsby – That’s just the way it is.

The women who saved us: Abbott and Taussig

“Tonight I’ve seen someone with no legs stay standing, Dad, and someone with no voice keep shouting.” – C.J. Cregg, The West Wing

From the late 1800’s until the 1950’s, the field of Pediatric Cardiology was dominated by women. In fact, women were working in Pediatric Cardiology before anyone had ever named the specialty. Because Pediatric Cardiology wasn’t really a medical specialty – it was where kids (and medical careers) went to die. And no one who had any sense wanted anything to do with it.

This was the state of medicine when Canadian Maude Abbott became a doctor in 1894. The number of female doctors at the time – in both Canada and America – could be counted on one hand. The male dominated medical profession viewed a female doctor as little more than a well-educated nurse. Even female patients were leery of a woman doctor.

Born in 1869, Abbott had decided on a medical career and graduated from Bishop’s College medical school in 1894. Abbott had gotten her undergraduate degree from McGill College and had applied to their medical school, only to find that they didn’t want her. McGill was one of the many medical schools that did not admit women.

Unable to find a job that suited her, Doctor Abbott toured Europe. She returned to Canada in 1987, opening a practice in Montreal. Before long, a fellow doctor (and her less than successful practice) had convinced her to take a research job at Royal Victoria Hospital. While at Royal Victoria, Abbott became interested in hearts and did ground breaking research on heart murmurs. The paper was good enough to be accepted by the Montreal Medical Society for presentation to the Society at their annual meeting. But Abbott would not be able to present it; the Society did not allow female membership.

If the work were to be presented, a male member of the Society would have to do it. Reluctantly, Abbott turned over her work and the paper was presented. But when the paper appeared in the Medical Society journal, it was assumed by readers that the gentleman was the author. Time passed and people forgot; it wasn’t until the early 1970’s that the M. E. Abbott, MD listed on the title sheet was recognized as the actual writer.

By late 1898 Maude Abbott was back at McGill. Stung by the fact that they had turned away someone who would eventually be recognized by the Montreal Medical Society (even if she was just a girl) McGill wanted her… but they didn’t have any job to give her. Finally they appointed Dr. Abbott as Assistant Curator of the Medical Museum with a promise to promote her when the Curator retired.

A 19th century medical museum was not what you might expect. Its primary job was to help doctors learn, and the museum was full of preserved body parts. Even with preservation, the “exhibits” would wear out and new items were constantly being sought out. A good museum also had any number of unusual or diseased specimens – things doctors might not see very often. These were very much desired as medical training of the day was more hands on, and a good museum would have plenty of normal and unusual items to study.

McGill was not a good medical museum. Things were misplaced, mislabeled, or had disappeared. There wasn’t even a catalogue and no one seemed to know where anything was. Even worse, the employees had no medical training; you could refer to something by its scientific name and no one knew what you were talking about. Obviously the first job would be the hardest – catalog and organize everything, give it some sense of order.

Abbott’s boss looked at the calender – three weeks to his retirement. No way did he want to get involved in a major project this close to leaving. But if you want to, go right ahead. So Maude got busy.

And that is when she found it.  A preserved heart in a glass jar. But was this thing really a heart – there were what looked like two Atriums, but only one Ventricle. A deeper study revealed a second Ventricle, one so small that it was barely noticable. Two of the valves drained into the larger Ventricle, and she couldn’t tell what fed the other Ventricle. The label on the container read Ulcerative Endocarditis, but that had to be the cause of death. Endocarditis could not do this to a heart.

As expected, no one knew anything about the heart. Abbott knew someone who might; Dr. William Osler was a McGill graduate and an old friend. Osler was living in the United States and building Johns Hopkins into the institution that it would become. Abbott wrote Dr. Osler, describing the heart and asking if he knew anything about it.

Osler did know – he gave details that Abbott hadn’t noticed and he called it the “Holmes Heart” – so called because it had been donated to the medical museum by Andrew Holmes, that Medical School Director in 1822. The heart was so grossly deformed that an article about it appeared in the Edinburgh Medical Journal. (Experts surmise that the Holmes Heart very well may have been a Cor Triloculare Biatriatum heart, a very rare defect indeed.)

Curious still, Abbott searched for the issue of the Edinburgh Medical Journal that contained the research paper about the heart. She was shocked to discover that the heart was removed from a 22-year-old man during his autopsy. This heart had worked for twenty-two years? HOW? With that thought in her head, Doctor Maude Abbott decided to try to find out exactly how a defective heart worked… and perhaps one day, fix them.

And in that moment Congenital Cardiology was born.

Fast forward in time…

The situation was almost the same for Dr. Helen Taussig. By 1930, there were still very few female doctors, and opinion of them had not improved. Taussig was about to get a job at Johns Hopkins Hospital because she had gone to medical school there – it would be a bit difficult for the Hopkins Administration to award Taussig an MD and then claim that she wasn’t good enough to do the job. Helen wasn’t doing anything to discourage that thinking, because she had a little known secret: Helen Taussig, MD was losing her hearing.

Hopkins put her in charge of the Cardiac Care Unit of the Harriet Lane Home for Invalid Children, the dreaded Pediatric Cardiology department. In the 1930’s children with heart problems fell into two categories. One group had hearts weakened by Rheumatic Fever; these children would often recover but be left weakened by the disease’s attack on the heart valves; and children with Congenital Heart Defects (CHDs). CHDs were incurable with very few treatment options. If you were lucky a heart defect let you live until you were a teenager, but it always won in the end. 100% fatality rate – with luck, you could slow it down, but that was it.

Taussig was a natural-born researcher and could see only one way to try to figure out how heart defects worked. Nearly every day she sat down with grieving parents and asked a terrible question: May I conduct an autopsy on your child? She wouldn’t leave the job to others, Taussig would do the autopsy herself, and often she would remove and preserve the heart. In a few years her office was an unofficial medical museum, made up almost exclusively of hearts. Word started getting around about what she was doing and other doctors started complaining. Taussig’s boss and former mentor in medical school, Dr. Edwards Park, had to tell her to try to be a little more discrete several times. Taussig could make a bad situation worse by wanting to slice up a child, and by now her hearing loss was obvious. But the Cardiac Clinic was also producing some results, and most of the new ideas came from Taussig. Heart Defects (“Congenital Malformations”, as Taussig always called them) still won all the battles, but they were helping the kids live longer and better. If your child has a heart problem, doctors around the country were telling parents, get them to Hopkins.

Taussig had overcome her hearing problem with a special stethoscope that worked with a hearing aid (it was huge, the amplifier case is visible IN THIS PHOTO. Look for the black box balanced on the edge of the wheelchair) and by teaching herself to feel a heartbeat with her fingertips (CLICK HERE for a close up photo of her fingertip technique). But despite all this, there was nothing she could do. Children were living a little longer, and that was it.

Taussig observed what she called the “Fallot Squat,” when children with Tetralogy of Fallot (ToF) would squat deeply, folding their knee joints as much as possible. After thinking about this activity Taussig was able to determine that the children with low blood oxygen were actually suffocating, despite breathing deeply. Further investigation and reasoning gave her an idea: Heart surgery had never been tried before, but what if the blood vessels near the heart were moved around? Rearrange them to deliver more blood to the lungs and oxygenate it better. Would that work? Taussig thought that it would – but she wasn’t a surgeon, and couldn’t convince any of the Hopkins surgeons to try it.

A new Chief of Surgery arrived in late 1942, a man named Blalock from Vanderbilt University. It wasn’t love at first sight; in fact, the two disliked each other. The new doctor… well, he was a typical surgeon, thought the entire world revolved around him. His way or the highway. She wouldn’t admit to it, but Taussig could be stubborn herself. You didn’t mess with her patients, even a little bit. Add to that the fact that her deafness robbed her of a lot of opportunities for human interaction, and Helen Taussig was a loner. Her clinic, her patients, her research, her world. And very few people were admitted to that world.

It finally came to a head in the Hopkins Cafeteria. Legend has it that Taussig barged into a conversation between Blalock and Parks and took over. Working fast because she knew she’d have only one chance, Taussig convinced Blalock that she knew what she was talking about: an operation to direct more blood to the lungs of kids with defective hearts might work.

An additional year of research was frustrating, but necessary. Blalock and his research assistant, Vivien Thomas, had considered a similar idea while at Vanderbilt but had never progressed to human testing. Meanwhile, Helen was still doing autopsies. She didn’t like it, but moving too fast could ruin the entire project.

On November 29, 1944 they still weren’t ready but they tried anyway. Eileen Saxon was near death and could not wait much longer. Entering through an incision in her side, Blalock clamped the Subclavian Artery, cut it, and sewed it into the Pulmonary Artery. When the clamps were removed the surgical team watched in amazement as her blue lips slowly turned pink.

Even though all three of them have passed, Taussig, Blalock, and Thomas live on. The Blalock-Taussig shunt is still used today, and the entire field of Congenital Cardiac Surgery exists because of  them. “These children are my crossword puzzles,” Helen Taussig once said. “And one day I shall solve them.”

Room 706

The first Congenital Heart Surgery occurred on November 29, 1944 in Room 706 of the Harriet Lane Home for Invalid Children, the facility for children at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Located in the East Wing of the 4th floor, most of Hopkins’ early heart operations took place there. While there had been heart surgeries before this (Dr. Robert Gross had been repairing PDAs since 1938) this with the first surgical procedure specifically designed to relieve the effects of a Congenital Heart Defect. The operation was later named the Blalock-Taussig Shunt and is still in use today.

Here is a photo of Room 706 taken February 3, 1945 during the second Blalock-Taussig Shunt. (You can click on this photo and enlarge it) Blalock and his team are hard at work and most of the people who participated in that first operation are in this photograph. Ever wonder who they are, and what happened to them?

The first patient, Eileen Saxon, survived but again became Cyanotic a few months later. A second operation – once again the Blalock-Taussig Shunt, but on the opposite side of the body this time – was performed but Eileen died just a few days before her third birthday. In fact, fourteen of the first seventy patients to undergo the Blalock-Taussig Shunt died as the operating team learned the proper techniques needed for Cardiac Surgery.

Alfred Blalock (Surgeon, leaning over patient): Already head of the Hopkins Surgical Department and a Professor of Surgery, Blalock held those positions until he retired in 1964. He died a few months later.

Vivien Thomas (behind Blalock, face partially obscured by operating room spotlight): Thomas continued in his job as Surgical laboratory Assistant to Dr. Blalock and was later named Director of Surgical Research Laboratories. In 1976 he received an honorary doctorate from Johns Hopkins. Thomas retired in 1979 and died in 1985.

Olive Berger (Nurse Anesthetist, standing at head of table): Miss Berger is in this photograph but did not participate in the November 29 operation.                Anesthesiologist Merel Harmel been on duty that day, and either Harmel or Berger usually worked with Blalock. Miss Berger died in 1981 and her notebooks, currently in the Hopkins Archives, are considered important historical records of the first heart operations.

Denton Cooley (Across Operating Room table from Blalock): Just an intern at the time, Cooley would go on to form the Texas Heart Institute in 1962 and is considered one of the best heart surgeons in the world.

William Longmire (to Blalock’s left): After medical school, Longmire had left the residency program to run his father’s medical practice until the older Longmire recovered. Returning to Hopkins, he was granted a temporary residency and assisted during the first Blalock-Taussig shunt. Feeling he had earned his way back into a regular surgical residency program but having almost nowhere to put him, Dr. Blalock made him the Chief of Plastic Surgery.  Longmire left Hopkins in 1948 to become Chairman of Surgery at UCLA. He continued as Chairman of Surgery until 1976 and passed away in 2003.

Helen Taussig (Not identifiable but most likely in room): Already head of the Cardiac Division of the Harriet Lane Home, the operation would also bring her to prominence. Her 1947 book Congenital Malformations of the Heart (along with a second volume dealing with specific Heart Defects) were the first modern textbooks outlining the diagnosis and treatment of Congenital Heart Defects. Considered the mother of Pediatric Cardiology, Taussig would retire in 1963 but never ceased researching. In addition to her work with young Cardiac Kids, she was instrumental in preventing the use of Thalidomide in pregnant women in the United States. Taussig died in an automobile collision in 1986. The two women at the foot of the table are not Taussig; neither is the woman standing to Denton Cooley’s right. Taussig wore glasses, none of these three women wear them.

Room 706 itself: The Harriet Lane Home for Invalid Children closed in 1972 as the pediatric hospital moved into a more modern building. The old building was torn down in 1974.