Cardiac surgery is surgery on the heart, typically to correct congenital heart disease or the complications of ischaemic heart disease or valve problems created by various causes including endocarditis.

The first sucessful cardiac surgery performed without any complications was by Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, an African-American pioneer who succesfully repaired a pericardial stab wound in Provident Hospital on July 9, 1893.

It was soon discovered that the repair of intracardiac pathologies necessitated a bloodless and motionless environment, which means that the heart should be stopped and by-passed by use of an extracorporeal circulation technique , hence the term of cardiopulmonary bypass . The first successful intracardiac correction of a congenital heart defect using hypothermia was performed by Dr. F. John Lewis and Dr. C. Walton Lillehei at the University of Minnesota on September 2, 1952. Dr. J.H.Gibbon at Jefferson Medical School in Philadelphia reported in 1953 the first successful use of extracorporeal circulation by means of a pump-oxygenator , but he abandoned the method, disappointed by subsequent failures. In 1954 Dr. Lillehei realized a successful series of operations with the controlled cross-circulation technique in which the patient's mother or father was used as a 'heart-lung machine'. Dr. John W. Kirklin at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota started using a Gibbon type pump-oxygenator in a series of successful operations, and was soon followed by surgeons in various parts of the world.

External Links

Congenital Heart Disease Surgical Corrective Procedures - A list from surgical procedures from LearningRadiology.com

More information about Daniel Hale Williams at Princeton.edu[1]