[The beginnings of cardiac surgery]

Beginnings of cardiac surgery were primarily pericardiac surgery: persisting ductus ligation (Gross), coarctation repair (Crafoord) and Blalock's seminal operation of arterio-pulmonary shunt. The first really open cardiac procedure is due to Gibbon who worked up an apparatus capable to assume heart and lungs function. In the same time, Lillehei operated on congenital cardiac lesions in children with the concept of "cross-circulation". For a long time confined in Minneapolis and Rochester, cardiac surgery spread all over USA. Starr lead the valvular surgery with the use of caged ball prosthesis (Starr-Edwards); Effler and Favaloro developed coronary surgery; outside USA, the Russian Kolessov used for the first time an internal mammary artery. As far as cardiac transplantation is concerned, a debt is due to Hardy, but the merit of the-first successful cardiac transplantation goes to South-African Barnard.