PART OF ARTERY REMOVED

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25833, 18 June 1949, Page 2

PART OF ARTERY REMOVED

UNUSUAL OPERATION AT AUCKLAND

FIRST OF ITS KIND IN NEW ZEALAND

(New Zealand Press Association.) AUCKLAND, June 17. Medical history was made at the Green Lane Hospital this week, when for the first time in New Zealand a team of surgeons, anaesthetists, physicians and nurses co-operated in an operation which involved removing part of the main artery leading from a young man's heart. It was an example of the amazing advances which have been made in recent years in arterial surgery. The operation was successful, and the patient has. since made good progress. - The patient, who was about 20 years of age was suffering from constriction of the main artery leading from the heart. The artery should have been about the vyidth of an adult's thumb, but was constricted to approximately the diameter of a pencil point. The condition had been present since the man’s birth, and the progressive effect of the back pressure which the constriction placed on the heart Was leading to invalidism and was likely to have become fatal at an early age. The operation, which took five hours, consisted of opening the chest to expose the heart and the artery. The artery was then clamped on each side of the constriction, which was cut away. The two ends were joined, and the clamps were slowly released, after the pulsations had been observed for some time and it had been determined that the artery was sound- The chest was again closed. During the operation, sufficient blood circulated through the collateral vessels around the heart to keep the patient alive. The Medical Superintendent of the Green Lane Hospital (Dr. C. B. Gilberd) said the success of the operation was due to excellent team work on the part of the surgeons, anaesthetists, physicians, and members of the nursing staff. The first operation of this kind performed in Australia was published only in recent months, and'it was understood that there had previously been only about 20 in the world. Some of the surgeons concerned in the Green Lane case had investigated that type of operation overseas.