The birth of a new era: the introduction of the systemic-to-pulmonary artery shunt for the treatment of cyanotic congenital heart disease.

Cardiac surgery was revolutionized on November 29, 1944, when Eileen Saxon underwent the first systemic-to-pulmonary artery shunt at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America. The systemic-to-pulmonary artery shunt was initially developed in the laboratory and then applied to patients through the unique collaboration of Vivien Thomas, Alfred Blalock, and Helen B. Taussig. This innovation was the first operation to successfully treat cyanotic cardiac disease. The history of the first operation to successfully treat cyanotic heart disease is an extraordinary history of courage, innovation, and scientific breakthrough. Just as striking is perhaps the ability of the protagonists of this story to overcome seemingly insurmountable barriers of racial and gender discrimination and revolutionize medicine.

[Fallot, Blalock and Taussig - the 'blue babies' odyssey]. / Fallot, Blalock i Taussig - czyli odyseja "niebieskich dzieci"

120 years ago, Louis Fallot described a congenital heart malformation consisted of a special constellation. This was a cyanotic malformation, hence the term 'the blue baby syndrome'. In 1949 there was a first trial of correction of tetralogy of Fallot by joining pulmomary artery with subclavial artery. This vessels connection was fixed in medical terminology as Blalock-Taussig shunt.