HEART SURGERY IN MOSCOW

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28896, 16 May 1959, Page 7

HEART SURGERY IN MOSCOW

Soviet Report “A Little Fantastic” (New Zealand Press Association) MOSCOW, May 14. A British doctor today described as "a little fantastic’* an account by a Soviet doctor of a hole-in-the-heart operation by a British specialist in Moscow last week. The Soviet doctor, Dr. Mikhail Tsentsiper, writing in the Soviet youth newspaper “Komsomolskaya Pravda,” said that the British heart-lung machine broke down towards the end of the operation. Dr. Tsentsiper said the machinbegan working irregularly and suddenly stopped while a team of British doctors visiting Russia were operating on the girl. “In spite of this, the operation was successful,’’ he wrote. He described a dramatic race against time to get new parts made in Moscow to repair the machine in time for a second operation on Saturday. The second operation began using the British machine with “parts made by Russian workers,” the Soviet doctor wrote. This operation was also successful. Dr. Denis Melrose, who designed the machine, chuckled today when he was shown a copy of the Russian doctor’s report. “What actually happened was that an auxiliary machine, whose purpose is to remove blood from the open heart, did not work perfectly,” he said. “This did not and could not have affected the outcome of the operation because a reserve pump was fitted to it. ‘ The fault was in an accessory gearbox, not part of the heartlung itself, Dr. Melrose said. He asked for spare parts to be flown from London, and called on the Russians for help because he was not prepared to undertake the second operation without the apparatus working properly.

Dr. Melrose said: “At no time was there a chance of the operation failing due to mechanical causes, because the heart lung machine itself functioned perfectly throughout.’’