HEART IN HAND

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 40, 17 February 1933, Page 9

HEART IN HAND

A SURGICAL MARVEL

MAN'S LIFE SAVED

(From "The Post's" Representative.) . SYDNEY,.. February 9. A brilliant feat of surgery was described in Perth this week/when the story was told of how a Perth doctor opened a man's chest, held the heart pulsating in his' hand, and pierced the pericardium, draining a septic blood clot from a cavity surrounding the heart. The operation was performed in a desperate effort to save the life of Leonard Desmond' Thompson,'and. if is now expected that he will recover and be restored to normal health; .■ - ■■.. : . - ■ . ■ ' ~ . V. , ■ Leading medical .men point out that operations of an approximate nature may have been performed during, the war; but ;there is no record in the world of an., identical operation-in. civilian, life.- -It was impossible .to submit the- patient to- customary- ; general anaesthetic. The anaesthetic :ad«ninistered was oxygen .and: gas.,' which is ■a sublimated form of .the old laughing gas, once so popular with dentists. The heart region was treated with a local anaesthetic, all tending, to make the operation more difficult. The chest cartilage was cut and. removed, and three ribs, were taken away to permit of access to the heart. Then the surgeon was obliged to work purely as his skill suggested and as the conditions dictated.; "."..■:'■■• ' A party of other doctors watched the surgeon, hold the man's heart in his hand'whilo he used a scalpel to make the- incisions in the pericardium and heart wall, which adhesions from a six weeks-old butcher's knife wound had stnek together. A -rubber glove, was inserted, and two abscesses actually on the heart were drained and cleaned. 'The:, operation : lasted . one hour. ' -.'.... Thompson:was-cutting -meat on December 5, and a narrow-bladed knife slipped and struck /him on", the' chest. He recovered-in hospital in a .week, the doctor who attended him. not realising the serious : nature . of. ■■ ■; the wouad. Later, an X-ray, /revealed" that the wound had penetrated; the pericardium and heart and had;.set up sepsis. When the doctor.'decided on the drastic operation Thompson was in a state of syncope- and practically dead*