The Society Lecture. European Society for Cardiovascular Surgery Meeting, Montpellier, France, September 1992. The birth of open-heart surgery: then the golden years.

The development of open-heart surgery has been reviewed beginning with general body hypothermia and inflow stasis, then continuing with extracorporeal circulation by controlled cross-circulation. The successes with the latter technique stimulated rapid development of the simple disposable highly effective bubble oxygenator for extracorporeal circulation to permit correction of virtually all forms of congenital and acquired heart disease. For the few conditions not amenable to corrective procedures, heart replacement became a practical reality. The creation of chronic heart block in the early operations had a very deleterious effect upon survival until highly effective electrical pacing was developed.