Some Heart Flaws Repaired By Nature

Press, Volume C, Issue 29621, 18 September 1961, Page 12

Some Heart Flaws Repaired By Nature

Research on case histories showed that some heart conditions now being repaired by surgery might well be repaired by the body itself said Dr P. H. Wood, a world authority on heart disease, in Christchurch yesterday He was speaking particularly of the smaller hole-in-the-heart conditions, which are nw being treated in the operating theatres of the world's leading hospitals with the help of the spectacular heart-lung machine. The heart-lung machine is primed with pints of donated blood and acts as a by-pass while the surgeon operates on the heart. The patient's heart stops beating and the heart-lung machine does its work while the heart is being repaired

But Dr Wood thinks some of these ho'e-in-the-heart operations are probably unnecessary. “Hole-in the-heart does not automatically spell surgery." he said “But today we whip them all away for surgery, even though some of the smaller ones don't need It. “It is only the large holes in the heart which require urgent surgery” he said "Some rtf the small ones will close up spon'aneously if thev are left alone “Nature seems to gum them up us’ng the same platelets in the tt'ood which stop bleeding when we cut, ourselves.

"The blood corpuscles called platelets, are deposited around the hole. partly blocking the hole itself, but also gumming down over the hole the flap of one of the heart valves.

“We are beginning to think that more of these holes close up spontaneously than was ever thought possible before These are the ones associated with the most common hole-in-the-heart condition,” he said. Dr. Wood is director of the Institute of Cardiology. London and also physician to the National Heart Hospital. London, and to the cardiac

department _of Brompton Hospital, London. “I am a physician, not a surgeon,” he said yesterday, “and it is my job to find out more about life histories of cases which are left to nature.”

Dr. Wood said he was doing research at the moment on the way in which nature adapts the circulation to help patients with congenital heart disease

He is in Christchurch at the invitation of the Christchurch Hospital postgraduate committee, which is holding a 10-day physicians' course, beginning today. He will be the chief speaker at the course.

Dr. Wood was a house surgeon at Christchurch Hospital in 1931 and 1932, and his wife is the daugh'er of the late Dr E J. Guthrie, of Christchurch.