Congenital Heart Disease: Latest Interventional and Surgical Treatments

After the turn of the century, surgery on the big vessels became more popular. However, heart valve surgery was unknown until Henry Souttar successfully operated on a young woman with mitral valve stenosis in 1925. In order to palpate and study the injured mitral valve, he opened a hole in the left atrium appendage and inserted a finger. Although the patient lived for several years, Souttar's colleagues thought the treatment was unjustified, and he was unable to continue. Following World War II, cardiac surgery underwent substantial changes. In 1947, Thomas Sellors of Middlesex Hospital in London effectively separated a stenosed pulmonary valve in a Tetralogy of Fallot patient with pulmonary stenosis. Russell Brock utilised a specifically developed dilator in three cases of pulmonary stenosis in 1948, possibly uninformed of Sellors' work. Later that year, he invented a punch for resecting a stenosed infundibulum, a condition commonly associated with Tetralogy of Fallot. Thousands of these blind procedures were carried out until the invention of cardiopulmonary bypass, which allowed for direct valve surgery.