open-heart surgery

/oh"peuhn hahrt"/

surgery performed on the exposed heart while a heart-lung machine pumps and oxygenates the blood and diverts it from the heart.

[1975-80]

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Any surgical procedure opening the heart and exposing one or more of its chambers, most often to repair valve disease or correct congenital heart malformations (see congenital heart disease).

Invention of the heart-lung machine (see artificial heart), which allows the heart to be stopped during surgery, made it possible. The first successful open-heart surgery was performed in the U.S. in 1953 by John H. Gibbon, Jr., to close an atrial septal defect.

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 any surgical procedure that requires an incision into the heart, thus exposing one or more of the cardiac chambers, or requires the use of a heart-lung machine (heart–lung machine), a device that allows circulation and oxygenation of the blood to be maintained outside the patient's body. The most-common open-heart procedures are for repair of valvular disease and for correction of congenital heart defects (congenital heart disease), chiefly septal and valve defects. Open-heart surgery has also been used in the treatment of severe coronary artery disease (coronary heart disease).

      The use of a heart-lung machine during open-heart surgery allows the surgeon to access a dry and motionless heart. Until the first such cardiopulmonary bypass devices were developed, most cases of valve disease and congenital defects either were considered inoperable or were corrected by “blind” (closed-heart) procedures. The first successful open-heart procedure using a heart-lung machine was performed by American surgeon John H. Gibbon, Jr., in 1953. Gibbon used the procedure to close an atrial septal defect, a hole in the wall between the two atria (atrium) (upper chambers) of the heart.

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