Surgery in Congenital Heart Disease

In conclusion, I would emphasize that the Blalock-Taussig and Potts operations are of value only in cyanotic cases caused by deficient blood flow. The optimum age for the operation is probably from 5 to 9 years, although children as young as a few months and adults in the thirties have been done. One must remember that, in vascular surgery terms, the vessels are three times the chronological age; that is, an operation on the aorta of a person of twenty-five carries the operative risk that a gastrectomy or pneumonectomy or similar major procedure would carry in a person of seventy-five.

This is a field in which the disease is fascinating, the methods of diagnosis tedious, time-consuming and often expensive. Most of the patients apparently are impoverished. The operation is difficult, but stimulating. The successes are far from uniform but steadily improving. However, I know of nothing more gratifying to a surgeon than the feeling that his efforts may have contributed in altering the hopeless outlook of some of these little children to that of a functionally normal childhood.