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J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg 1994;107:942
© 1994 Mosby, Inc.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Origins of warm heart surgery

Division of Cardiovascular Surgery
St. Michael's Hospital
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario M5B 1W8, Canada

To the Editor:

During the past few years, our group has been interested in the experimental and clinical use of continuous normothermic blood cardioplegia. As a coauthor of the "original" report on warm heart surgery, I am eager to inform you of a remarkable paper from Lillehei's group in 1957 by Gott and coworkers. ¹ In this report, Gott and coworkers first described the conceptual framework for what is now called "warm heart surgery." Their pioneering experimental study combined normothermic blood perfusion with potassium-induced arrest (with Melrose's solution of potassium citrate).

Even during this early period of cardiac surgery, Lillehei's group was interested in the clinical use of this technique for coronary artery surgery and valve surgery. It is truly unfortunate that Melrose's solution fell into disfavor (largely because of the high concentration of the potassium citrate) and that the cardiac surgical community moved away from this early technique of continuous normothermic blood cardioplegia.

We are once again reminded of the enormous contributions of Lillehei's group to the development of cardiac surgery. I am sorry that we were not previously aware of this landmark paper. We should therefore now give appropriate credit to these early workers as the originators of the technique. It should make us humble and remind us to avoid extravagant claims of priority. Many times in the history of medicine, researchers have "reinvented the wheel." It appears that we have done this once again.

References

1. Gott VL, Gonzalez JL, Paneth M, Varco RL, Sellers RD, Lillehei CW. Cardiac retroperfusion with induced asystole for open surgery upon the aortic valve or coronary arteries. Proc Soc Exp Biol Med 1957;94:689-92.
   

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This Article Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Personal Folders Download to citation manager Author home page(s): Anthony L. Panos Permission Requests Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Panos, A. L. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Panos, A. L.