HEART SURGERIES

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/heart/pioneers.html

History of Heart Surgeries
(information from PBS. org NOVA online, Pioneers of Heart Surgery)

For the majority of our past history, the heart was known as too delicate of an organ to be messed with..including performing any type of surgeries or procedures to it. It was not until World War II when thousands of soldiers were wounded from battle that the military doctors at hand needed to operate. Dr. Dwight Harken, was among one of the first to perform surgeries on the heart. He was a young army doctor from the United States. After soldiers were in battle and had bullets or fragments of the bullets left in their hearts Dr. Harken did not know what to do. It was too dangerous to leave the fragments in the heart but it was also too dangerous to attempt to get the bullet pieces out. This was the beginning for Dr. Harken. He began to practice procedures on animals. He developed a technique that allowed him to cut into the wall of a still beating heart, insert a finger, locate the shrapnel and remove it.

Results of his earliest practices: All of his first 14 animals subjects died. Of the second group of 14, half died. Of the third group of 14, only 2 died.

In 1948, Harken and Dr. Charles Bailey, a surgeon from Philadelphia both had similar procedures or ideas on how to correct mitral stenosis. This is a condition that where the mitral valve is narrowed and won't open properly.

This was their procedure: a small hole was cut in the side of a beating heart and a finger was inserted to find and very carefully widen the narrowed valve.
Unfortunately. the earliest tries at this were unsuccessful, but as time went on surgeons gradually improved their techniques and eventually the procedure became safe and extremely successful. This came to be known as "Closed Heart" Surgery, and spread to hospitals all around the world.

Though this new improvement was fantastic, surgeons and doctors were still faced with a problem. This procedure could not be done for every patient with a heart problem or heart defect. They were faced with a brick wall, if they couldn't work on the heart from the inside then nothing could be done. They needed to find the solution to one massive problem. How can they open up the heart without the patients bleeding to death? If they stopped circulation temporarily they would have about 4 minutes to work and fix the problem before the patient would have brain damage due to being deprived of oxygen.

Dr. Bill Bigelow was the one to come up with the first potential solution or answer to this problem. After testing his procedures on animal subjects he came to the conclusion that when at lower temperatures, the tissues of the body and brain did not need as much oxygen and could survive without oxygenated blood for longer. From here on doctors have made significant advancements in this field and have accomplished a great deal regarding heart surgeries, more specifically, open heart surgeries.

Stress is BAD for the heart. A lot of stress may lead to high blood pressure or high cholesterol. It can be viewed as a chain of events. 


1) You are VERY stressed
2) Your blood pressure goes up
3) You may be very tense and continue to be more stressed
4) This may cause you to smoke to relieve stress
5) Smoking may lead to heart disease or heart failure.

When looking at what the meaning of a HEARTBEAT is, it is important to look at the cardiac cycle. This is a term referring to all or any of the events related to the blood pressure that occurs from the beginning of one heartbeat to the beginning of the next. This cycle is described as a heart rate.

EKG (Electrocardiogram): this is a test done in order to see if a patient has a heart problem or is at risk for one. Small sticky electrodes are stuck on several parts of the patient's body. Wires are used to connect the patient to an EKG machine. The electrical activity created by the patient's heart is processed by the EKG machine and then printed on a special graph paper. Next a doctor will evaluate the test and determine whether the patient has a heart problem. 

Coronary Bypass: An open-heart surgery in which the rib cage is opened and a section of a blood vessel is grafted from the aorta to the coronary artery to bypass the blocked section of the coronary artery and improve the blood supply to the heart (google definitions)

Heart Transplant: A surgical procedure for selected patients whose hearts are so severely damaged that medications, procedures, and surgical repair cannot help. A donated heart is transplanted into the patient to replace the damaged heart (google definitions)

Angiocardiography: A method of detecting whether a person's coronary arteries are narrowed or blocked. A dye is first introduced into the patient's coronary arteries and heart through a catheter. X-rays are then taken as the dye moves through the heart and coronary arteries (google definitions)

HEART PATIENT CASE HISTORY
  
Name: Mickey Mouse
Age: 55
Height: 6 feet
Weight: 100 lbs


History: Mickey has been under a lot of stress lately. He has been fighting a lot wit his girlfriend, Minnie. They have been together for the past 50 years. Mickey is an actor and has not been in a lot of movies or shows lately. Work is decreasing for one. This is a scary time. He has always found work and everyone has loved him but now this dramatic drop in love for the mouse has caused stress, and anxiety. This has left him to eat unhealthy, and exercise less. He has been going against his own morals and been eating food from McDonalds daily. He refuses to go to the hospital and be seen by anyone.


Family History: None..is not documented and can not be found.


Tests: Luckily for Mickey in Disney World everyone who resided there had to have an EKG test. Disney has been afraid that many of their characters are at risk for heart disease of some sort due to the obesity and size that some of the characters are at. It was shown that Mickey was at risk for a heart disease so an Angiocardiography was performed. 


Results: Shockingly enough, Mickey only had an aneurysm which was due to the abnormality in his birth. This is the thinning and bulging out - in part of the wall of a vein, artery, or the heart.

Mickey needs to go through a CT scan, MRI, and an Echocardiogram (procedure that evaluates the structure and function of the heart by using sound waves recorded on an electronic sensor that produce a moving picture of the heart and heart valves). The danger of this Aneurysm is that is can continue to grow and eventually burst. Unfortunately the aneurysm is in his heart, if this bursts it will lead him to bleed to death.