How "the last field of surgery" —the human heart—may some day be opened to the deft scalpels of the world's surgeons was explained Friday at the 13th congress of the International Society of Surgery by Dr. John H. Gibbon Jr., Philadelphia, developer of "the artificial heart."
Never in the history of surgery have doctors been able to see the heart's interior during operations. Incisions into the heart have always caused such severe hemorrhages that surg;eons have usual- ly been confined to relatively blind probing into the body's blood pump.
In an effort to take the edge off that medical snag, Dr. Gibbon has spent 15 years attempting to per-fect a machine which will take over the work of the heart and lungs during an operation. Just last month, the National Heart Institute of the United States Public Health Service allotted $26,827 to Dr. Gibbon and the Jefferson Medical college of Philadelphia for further experimentation. Thus far the machine, an impressive two-part mechanism which will just about fit through an ordinary doorway, has only been used on animals. But one dog had the blood cut off from his heart and shunted through the machine for 46 minutes without dying. The heart continues to beat and the lungs expand periodically, Dr. Gibbon explained, but no blood passes through the heart itself. The lung work had to be included in the system because blood passes through it in its circulation from the right to the left side of the heart.
