Open Heart Surgery In Oxygen Chamber

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30091, 27 March 1963, Page 15

Open Heart Surgery In Oxygen Chamber

The Press’' Special Service

AUCKLAND. March 26.

Surgery on the open heart may soon be possible without the use of heart-lung or similar machines, according to Sir Charles Illingworth, professor of surgery at Glasgow University. He told the Auckland Rotary Club that this would be possible through the use of big steel pressure chambers, inside which operations could be carried out. “We have been carrying out pioneer work in this field at Glasgow, using a pressure chamber 15 feet long and 11 feet in diameter," he said "So far all our work has been on animals, but it is possible that by now the team has carried out the first

operation on a baby with a congenital heart deficiency." By filling the chamber with oxygen under a pressure of two or three atmospheres, the patient’s tissues were saturated with a great excess of oxygen and his heart could be stopped for 40 minutes.

“This will enable us to carry out open heart operations. by avoiding the problems of the heart pump," he said. “It should also be suitable for babies, where the pumps cannot be used." Other uses of the pressure chamber were in the treatment of coal gas poisoning and in severe arterial bleeding when the extremities were likely to die from lack of oxygen. Sir Charles Illingworth who suggested that an Auckland medical school might come earlier than many thought, said no school could hope to survive without active medical research. "Without research and the spirit of inquiry,” he said, “a medical school is dead from the word go.”