MECHANICAL HEART GRIFFENHAGEN AND HUGHES 347 



Medicine reported the successful use of an artificial heart in animals 

 "to remove the coronary and thebesian flow from the right heart" 

 (Sewell and Glenn, 1951; Anon., 1949a). Adrian and Arthur Kan- 

 trowitz of Montefiore Hospital of New York and Cornell Uni- 

 \ersity employed on animals a mechanical heart which consisted of a 

 glass chamber and a standard roller-type pump in which "long-term 

 survivals have been noted" (Kantrowitz and Kantrowitz, 1951). Out 

 of a total of 61 cats used, the first 53 were lost in the process of develop- 

 ing the final technique, but the last eight all recovered from the pro- 

 cedure (Kantrowitz, Hurwitt, and Kantrowitz, 1951). 



At the Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco, another team of re- 

 searchers described a simple roller-type pump on which animals "tol- 

 erated occlusion of the cavae for periods of 46 minutes with survival" 

 (Leeds, Puziss, and Siegel, 1951). The report further noted "opening 

 and suture of the right ventricle for short periods was also tolerated 

 with survival of the animals." 



In Washington, D. C, at Georgetown University Hospital, still 

 another team (Broida, Freis, and Rose, 1952) developed a heart pump 

 for substituting for either the right or left ventricle, "leaving the lungs 

 and the opposite side of the heart to function normally." At Ohio 

 State University, a group (Sirak, Ellison, and Zollinger, 1950) de- 

 scribed a heart pump in which "animals were sustained by this appa- 

 ratus for as long as twenty minutes with the ventricle open . . ." Of 

 10 dogs subjected to the procedure, there were 5 deaths, all due, accord- 

 ing to the authors, to mechanical or technical failures of the apparatus. 

 At Tufts College Medical School and the New England Medical Cen- 

 ter, Boston, still another team (Wesolowski and Welch, 1951) em- 

 ployed a heart pump in 28 animal experiments in which the animals' 

 own lungs were used as the means of oxygenation. Of the 28 animals, 

 21 (75 percent) recovered. 



Other research teams who believed that the answer to success was to 

 attempt a bypass of both heart and lungs, adding oxygen to the blood 

 artificially, reported similar successes and failures. 



Clarence Dennis and associates (Dennis, Karlson, Eder, Nelson, 

 Eddy, and Sanderson, 1951 ; Anon., 1949b) at the University of Min- 

 nesota employed a pump oxygenator incorporating the oxygenation 

 principle of Gibbon and the pump principle of Dale and Schuster. 

 Survival in dogs subjected to intracardiac surgery was about 50 per- 

 cent. Failure was believed to be due to traumatic effects on the cellu- 

 lar elements of the blood. At the University of Western Ontario, 

 Canada, Russell A. Waud devised a heart-lung consisting of glass 

 syringes operated by a special cam, and a large percolator serving as 

 the oxygenator, which was reported to have been used successfully on 

 over 100 dogs (Waud, 1952). 



