In 1944, surgical technician Vivien Thomas, surgeon Alfred Blalock, and pediatric cardiologist Helen Taussig developed a shunt to treat blue baby syndrome, a condition where deoxygenated blood failed to reach the lungs, causing infants to turn blue and often die before age five. It was the first surgery performed on an infant for this condition. Vivien Thomas had developed and practiced the technique but, lacking a medical degree and because he was Black in 1944 Baltimore, was not permitted to operate on the patient himself; Alfred Blalock performed the surgery instead.
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Vivien Thomas had performed the procedure many times on canine models before it was tried on a human infant.
212 words · auto-generated from the episode video
1:04:07>> which we will come back to. 1944 invention of the Bllelock Thomas [ __ ] shunt. Yes, this was a huge deal. Surgical technician Vivian Thomas, surgeon Alfred Block and ped pediatric cardiologist Helen Taik. They developed this shunt to um basically do surgery on infants that had the B blue baby syndrome. So they used to have this condition where deoxxygenated deoxxygenated blood was not going to the lungs to get oxygen and so the babies would turn blue and a lot of them would die before they ever got to like the age of five. This was the
1:04:48first time that someone did surgery on an infant. And um the black technician um the black technician actually like invented the whole thing, but he didn't have a medical degree. Right. So in that photo over there where you're seeing um the operation actually happening, right? Dr. Alfred Bllock, he's the one who actually did the operation. And Thomas had done it a bunch of times. Vivian Thomas had done it a bunch of times to like canines, right, in the in the model, but he's not allowed to operate on on human
1:05:29beings because one, he doesn't have a medical degree, and two, he's black. It's 1944 in Baltimore.