A History of Cardiac Surgery

The beginning of cardiac surgery is generally considered to be the successful repair of a wound of the heart that took place on the 7th of September 1896 in Frankfurt am Main. This operation put an end to the widespread belief that nature had set the heart beyond the limits of surgery. The successive development of heart surgery moved together with other advances that were rapidly taking place in various fields of medicine and surgery and which, already in the first half of the 20th century, had allowed surgical pioneers to successfully correct a number of congenital and acquired heart diseases by adopting closed-heart techniques. Undoubtedly, the most notable progress in the history of cardiac surgery took place between the second half of the 1950s and the end of the 1960s with the introduction of extra-corporeal circulation that allowed surgeons to perform interventions under direct vision within the bloodless heart chambers. This fundamental technological innovation fostered the development of surgical procedures that are still adopted to this day. Among these that must be mentioned are the correction of complex congenital heart diseases, the designing and creation of implantable prosthetic heart valves, the introduction of coronary artery surgery, the repair of severe diseases of the aorta, the commencement of heart transplantation, and the first implantation of an artificial heart. This book narrates these fascinating and sometimes dramatic events, as well as detailing some of the greatest pioneers of cardiac surgery.