Nothing like a good feud to spark competition: First use of the total artificial heart.

As a native Houstonian, the notoriety surrounding Dr. Denton A Cooley's implantation of the total artificial heart on Good Friday, April 4, 1969, was inescapable. At the time, Drs. Cooley and Michael E. DeBakey were the two most famous surgeons in Houston and much of the world. They had worked together professionally for 18 years, revolutionizing cardiothoracic surgery and mastering aortic surgery from beginning to end. However, this working relationship ended abruptly, and one of the most famous feuds in medicine began. Little did I know at the time that I would train with both men, work in both their respective institutions (which are located on the most competitive block of the Texas Medical Center), and play a role four decades later as their relationship rekindled. Here, I recount what I have come to learn about these events.

What is in the Dash? An Examination of the Life and Contributions of John B. Flege, Jr., MD.

It is, indeed, a privilege to stand here before you this morning to give the annual Flege Lecture.  Dr. Sande Starnes has kindly supplied me with a list of prior visiting professors, who previously have had the honor to deliver this talk. When we examine the names of those who have been so honored, and note their many accomplishments, I cannot help but remember the words of Winston Churchill, who, when speaking of another person, could well have been speaking of me, when he described "a modest little person, with much to be modest about."

Making heart-lung machines work in India: Imports, indigenous innovation and the challenge of replicating cardiac surgery in Bombay, 1952-1962.

In 1962, surgeons at two hospitals in Bombay used heart-lung machines to perform open-heart surgery. The devices that made this work possible had been developed in Minneapolis in 1955 and commercialized by 1957. However, restrictions on currency exchange and foreign imports made it difficult for surgeons in India to acquire this new technology. The two surgeons, Kersi Dastur and PK Sen, pursued different strategies to acquire the ideas, equipment, and tacit knowledge needed to make open-heart surgery work. While Dastur tapped Parsi networks that linked him to local manufacturing expertise, Sen took advantage of opportunities offered by the Rockefeller Foundation to access international training and medical device companies. Each experienced steep learning curves as they pursued the know-how needed to use the machines successfully in dogs and then patients. The establishment of open-heart surgery in India required the investment of substantial labor and resources. Specific local, national, and transnational interests motivated the efforts. Heart-lung machines, for instance, took on new meanings amid the nationalist politics of independent India: Even as surgeons sought imported machines, they and their allies assigned considerable value to 'indigenous' innovation. The confluence of the many interests that made Sen and Dastur's work possible facilitated the uneasy co-existence of conflicting judgments about the success or failure of this medical innovation.

William Francis Rienhoff, Jr., MD - Halsted's Last Resident.

: William Francis Rienhoff Jr. was a skilled and innovative surgeon whose career spanned over 4 decades of patient care, clinical investigative research, and surgical education. He was an unforgettable character for those who knew him. Colleagues, coworkers, and friends developed strong and divergent opinions of him. His professional life coincided with the early development of general and thoracic surgery to which he contributed.

Key events in the history of cardiac surgery and paediatric cardiology.

In this report, the authors prepared an opinion poll regarding the most important people, events, technologies, concepts, discoveries, and therapies in paediatric cardiology and cardiac surgery. The results were presented in continuous slide show format at the 2017 Seventh World Congress of Pediatric Cardiology & Cardiac Surgery (WCPCCS 2017), Barcelona, Spain. The presentation (under international copyright) is made available herein for educational purposes.

Rudolf Ulrich Krönlein (1847-1910): An Innovative General, Thoracic, Neuro, and Ocular Surgeon.

The Swiss Professor Rudolf Ulrich Krönlein (1847-1910) was a pioneer in many fields of surgery, because he succeeded in introducing many innovations in different fields of surgery, for example, general surgery, thoracic surgery, neurosurgery, and ocular surgery. He was a reputable Professor of Surgery at Zurich University and was nominated for Nobel Prize in 1902.

René Favaloro: the heart surgeon.

The story of René Favaloro is almost unknown to the general public. Christian Barnard, the cardiac surgeon who performed the world's first human-to-human heart transplant, is much more famous than him; still, nowadays many more lives are saved thanks to Favaloro's work rather than to heart transplants. This paper wants to pay tribute to a great doctor and an extraordinary man: René Favaloro.

[The masters of thoracic trauma in the Central Hospital of the Mexican Red Cross. Their story and legacy]. / Los maestros del trauma torácico en el Hospital Central de la Cruz Roja Mexicana. Su historia y legado.

The branches of medicine responsible for the care of victims of different types of injuries were born as a result of the urgent need to save lives during the wars. In Mexico, one of the first hospitals developed for the care of injured patients was the Central Hospital of the Mexican Red Cross. The aim of this article is to pay tribute to the first service for the care of patients with chest trauma, founded in 1954, its founders and those who have continued with their work: Dr. Pedro Garza Alegría, Dr. Octavio Rivas Solís Dr. Jesús Genis Becerra, etc. In 64 years of existence, there have been trained eight specialists in cardiothoracic surgery and three of them have worked in the Central Hospital of the Mexican Red Cross.

A history of innovation: cardiac surgery in Minnesota.

For centuries, the heart was believed to be an inoperable organ. Through the development of new technologies and techniques, the initial difficulties inherent with operating on a moving organ began to fade. But as surgeons in the last century pushed the boundaries of cardiac repair, new problems arose. To solve them, they enlisted the help of physiologists, residents and engineers. By taking a multidisciplinary approach, sharing information and ideas, and working collaboratively, University of Minnesota and Mayo Clinic investigators found themselves at the forefront of cardiac surgery. This article reviews Minnesota's contributions to the field.

Milestones in surgery: 60 years of open heart surgery.

Long periods of experimental research signify the struggle for the goal to substitute the functions of heart and lungs by a machine. In 1931, John Heysham Gibbon, a young surgeon in Boston began animal experiments concentrating on this task. After almost 20 years he succeeded, in May 1953, he performed the first successful open heart operation using a heart-lung machine in the world in Philadelphia. Almost simultaneously, a team of surgeons around Clarence Walton Lillehei in Minneapolis had the same intentions, yet using a different approach. They applied the method of cross-circulation where a parent of the sick child served as "temporary placenta" like a biological oxygenator. Their first successful operation occurred in March 1954. All over the world, many scientists worked intensely on that subject, but did not succeed. However, these two great personalities, persistent and ingenious, reached the same scientific target with very different methods. Thus, both created the foundation for modern cardiac surgery, which is now performed daily all over the world.

60 and Counting: the history of "the thoracic and cardiovascular surgeon".

The Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgeon was founded as a scientific journal in 1953, making it one of the oldest publications in this specialty. Bearing the original title Thoraxchirurgie, its first language of publication was German. Although the primary focus lay on thoracic surgery, the concomitantly developing specialty cardiac surgery was also well represented from the start, finally taking over the lead in submissions. After having changed its name to Thoraxchirurgie, Vaskuläre Chirurgie in 1963, it became the official journal of the German Society for Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery in 1973. With the language of publication having turned into English in 1979, the final title came into effect. This report gives an overview over 60 years of continued development. The history of this journal illustrates not only the transformations of the surgical disciplines reflected but also those of scientific publishing.

Bernoulli in the operating room: from the perspective of a cardiac surgeon.

The Bernoullis were one of the most distinguished families in the history of science. It was Daniel Bernoulli who applied mathematical physics to medicine to further his understanding of physiological mechanisms that have an impact even in today's high-end medicine. His masterwork was the analysis of fluid dynamics, which resulted in Bernoulli's law. Most important for cardiac surgery, it describes how a centrifugal pump works within an extracorporeal circulation, lays the basis for measuring a gradient over a stenotic heart valve, and explains how to measure the transit time flow within a bypass graft.

December 2014 HeartWeek issue of cardiology in the young: highlights of HeartWeek 2014: diseases of the cardiac valves from the foetus to the adult.

This December Issue of Cardiology in the Young represents the 12th annual publication generated from the two meetings that compose "HeartWeek in Florida". "HeartWeek in Florida", the joint collaborative project sponsored by the Cardiac Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, together with Johns Hopkins All Children's Heart Institute of Saint Petersburg, Florida, averages over 1000 attendees every year and is now recognised as one of the major planks of continuing medical and nursing education for those working in the fields of diagnosis and treatment of cardiac disease in the foetus, neonate, infant, child, and adult. "HeartWeek in Florida" combines the International Symposium on Congenital Heart Disease, organised by All Children's Hospital and Johns Hopkins Medicine and entering its 15th year, with the Annual Postgraduate Course in Pediatric Cardiovascular Disease, organised by The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and entering its 18th year. This December, 2014 Issue of Cardiology in the Young features highlights of Johns Hopkins All Children's Heart Institute's 14th Annual International Symposium on Congenital Heart Disease, which was held at the Renaissance Vinoy Resort & Golf Club, Saint Petersburg, Florida, from 15-18 February, 2014. This Symposium was co-sponsored by The American Association for Thoracic Surgery (AATS) and had as its special focus " Diseases of the Cardiac Valves from the Fetus to the Adult ". We acknowledge the tremendous contributions made to paediatric and congenital cardiac care by Duke Cameron and Joel Brenner, and therefore we dedicate this December, 2014 HeartWeek Issue of Cardiology in the Young to them. Duke Cameron is Professor of Surgery at Johns Hopkins University and Cardiac Surgeon-in-Charge at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. Joel Brenner is Professor of Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University and Director of the Taussig Heart Center at Bloomberg Children's Center, The Johns Hopkins Hospital. Together, Joel and Duke lead the proud paediatric and congenital cardiac programme at The Johns Hopkins Hospital.

J. Mikulicz-Radecki, K. H. Bauer, and W. Bross. Three great surgeons, three different epochs, one clinic in Wroclaw.

The city of Wroclaw (Breslau) lies where the cultural and economic influences of the eastern, southern, and western Europe meet. Over a thousand years of history it changed the state affiliation several times. Since 1945, similarly as seven centuries ago, it lies within the borders of Poland. The historical complex of hospital buildings constructed at the end of the 19th century for the medical faculty remained almost untouched, despite catastrophic war destructions in the whole city. The building of surgical clinic witnessed epoch-making events in the discipline of surgery performed by the three great personalities. Jan Mikulicz-Radecki (1850-1905), the first head of the department, world famous physician and scientist, created in Wroclaw a modern surgical center. From among his numerous achievements the most important seems to be the performance of the world's first safe thoracotomy in the low-pressure chamber (1904). Karl Heinrich Bauer (1890-1979) was the next great personality, who had been leading the surgical department since 1933. Genetics, transplantology, traumatology and oncology were the main points of his interest. Because of political reasons he had to leave Wroclaw. He continued his surgical and scientific career in Heidelberg. Wiktor Bross (1903-1994) came to the ruined city directly after the World War II. As an experienced general and thoracic surgeon he created a new surgical school. First in Poland open heart surgery (1958) and renal transplantation (1966) were performed by him and his team in the same building, where Mikulicz-Radecki and Bauer worked in the past. The memory of all three great surgeons has been honored by placing their sculptures among the prominent Wroclaw citizens in the city hall.