Vivien Thomas’s Break-out Blue Baby Surgery

A Hopkins diagnostic pediatrician, Dr. Helen Taussig, suggested to Vivien Thomas and Dr. Blalock that they should find a surgical method to help babies who were born with too little oxygen in their blood. These infants were dubbed “blue babies” because their skin had a blue tint; their condition was called Tetralogy of Fallot (TOF). They had a difficult time breathing and could not walk or play like most children.  About one in 2,500 children in the U.S is born with TOF each year.

The diagram seen here shows a blue baby’s heart with its four TOF defects. First, the channel (artery) between the baby’s heart and lungs is too narrow (pulmonary valve stenosis). Next, there is an unwanted opening in the heart’s muscle that separates the right and left ventricles (ventricular septal defect). Then, the heart’s right chamber works harder than normal to pump blood through the narrowed pulmonary artery and becomes enlarged (right ventricular hypertrophy). The last defect is that the aorta and its valve is misplaced too far to the right. Each of these four flaws contributes to the lack of oxygen in the blue babies’ blood circulation.

Working long hours for nearly two years—even while continuing the ever-important shock work—Thomas devised an operation that would bring a significant amount of oxygenated blood to the babies. He showed Blalock, by demonstrating on a dog, how this surgery could be conducted on blue babies to allow them to live normal lives. It took great courage for a Black lab tech with a high school education to create this surgery, which was considered groundbreaking for two reasons: it showed that it is possible to operate on infants safely and it also demonstrated the possibility of operating close to the heart, neither of which had previously been thought possible.