RESUMEN
The University of Minnesota may be considered the cradle of heart surgery worldwide. That is where Dr. F. John Lewis carried out the first open heart surgery in September, 1952 and repaired an atrial septal defect in a 5 year old girl. Thenceforth, new solutions to allow systematic heart surgeries have been extensively investigated. This requires boldness and imagination. In 1954, Dr. Walton Lillehei, who had been working in Minnesota since after the war, carried out the first surgery with cross circulation using a second person who worked as a circulatory support, while the patient's heart was operated on. In 1955, he started using extracorporeal circulation using an oxygenator developed in association with Dr. Richard de Wall and the roller pump introduced by Michael DeBakey. By 1956 they had already performed 80 surgeries using the bubble oxygenator.