July 19, 1955, marked the last time that Dr. C. Walton Lillehei carried out a heart operation using the controlled cross-circulation technique. The patient was 5-year-old Paul Mathieu who was born with a ventricular septal defect. Here's a bedtime story for you history buffs... 
In the early 1950s, few cardiac anomalies could be corrected or palliated. Valve stenosis had been treated with valvotomy. PDA and CoA had been repaired in 1938 and 1944. And kids with tetralogy of Fallot were being palliated with Blalock-Taussig shunts.
In 1951, the University of Minnesota’s Dr. Clarence Dennis made the first unsuccessful attempts to close atrial septal defects using a heart-lung bypass machine of his own design, but neither patient survived.
In 1953, John Gibbon at @TJUHospital successfully closed an ASD in 18-year-old Cecelia Bavolek using a machine he had developed. However, subsequent attempts to repeat this feat were unsuccessful and Gibbon discontinued further work on the project.
From 1952 to 1955, F. John Lewis operated on 60 pts with ASD using hypothermia; 54 survived. While this was a big deal, ASDs are simple lesions that can be repaired quickly. Most other lesions were too complex to fix in the time allowed by this technique.
Between March 26, 1954, and July 19, 1955, 45 patients ranging from 14 weeks to 14 years old with congenital heart lesions that were previously considered “inoperable” underwent heart surgery at the University of Minnesota using Walt Lillehei's cross-circulation technique.
In cross-circulation, a donor serves as the heart and lungs while the pt's heart is operated upon. In most cases, the donor was a family member, usually a parent, sometimes a cousin, aunt, or uncle. But occasionally, the donor was an unrelated volunteer.
Among Lillehei's 45 cross-circulation patients, 28 survived to discharge. Twelve died in the OR or on postop day 1, and four died within a week of surgery. The first patient operated upon using this technique died on postoperative day 11 of pneumonia.
Notably, 20 pts were alive 50 years after surgery.
While this mortality rate is higher than anything we'd accept today, for most of these pts, the only alternative at the time would have been death, and parents came from all over the country to give their kids a fighting chance.
While this mortality rate is higher than anything we'd accept today, for most of these pts, the only alternative at the time would have been death, and parents came from all over the country to give their kids a fighting chance.
By May 1955, Lillehei had already begun transition to the DeWall bubble oxygenator which then took over as the default technique for heart surgery at the University of Minnesota. But it was cross-circulation that, over 16 months, ushered in the current era of open heart surgery.
Paul Mathieu survived the operation, by the way, and was alive and well at 30-years follow-up.
