HISTORY OF THE CATALAN CARDIAC SURGERY 1.
Isolated facts in cardiac surgery At the beginning of the 19th century, an important fact took place in relation to the advance of heart surgery. For the first time in the world, three pericardiotomies are practiced as a treatment for pericarditis with effusion. In 1819, Francese Romero(4), born in Concabella (LAranyó, in the Segarra region of Catalonia), practiced the first pericardiotomy in the world, in Almeria, later publishing his results in the Dictionnaire de la Société de Médecine(Paris, 1818-19). He did it at least in three cases of patients in extremely serious condition with an important pericardial effusion. In two of these three cases he achieved clinical recovery. At the end of the 19th century, the opinion about the possible surgical operation of the heart was that Medicine could not be expected to do the impossible(5). When
Ludwig Rehn did the first cardiac suture in 1897, he did away
with the erroneous belief based on Falopio's aphorism that: «Vulnerato
corde homo vivere non potest.» Analogous
to the 1897 results were those obtained by Ribas Ribas, who, in
1906 at the Hospital de Ia Santa Creu, sutured a cardiac lesion
also produced by a knife(6). Due to the extreme severity of the
patient's conditions there was no time to take her to the operating
theater and she was attended in the emergency ward. It was the first
cardiac suture done in Catalonia and possibly the first in Spain. Three
days later the patient died as a consequence of an empyema. The autopsy
revealed that the suture had been effective. In his conclusions Ribas
Ribas recommended heart surgery in all cases of cardiac wound. |
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