Alfred Blalock

Alfred Blalock (born April 5, 1899 in Culloden, Georgia , † September 15, 1964 in Baltimore ) was an American surgeon . He was best known for his pioneering medical research in the field of traumatic shock and the Blalock-Taussig anastomosis , which he developed together with his assistant Vivien Thomas and the pediatrician and cardiologist Helen Taussig . The Blalock-Taussig operation was originally used as a palliative operation for cyanotic children ( blue baby syndrome ), today it is used for the temporary relief of symptoms up to the final operation in infancy.

In 1954 he received the Antonio Feltrinelli Prize and the Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research and in 1959 the Canada Gairdner International Award . In 1945 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences , 1955 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and 1963 to the American Philosophical Society . Since 1955 he was a member of the Académie des Sciences .

education

At the age of 14, Blalock was inducted into the Georgia Military Academy - now the Woodward Academy - a preparatory school belonging to the University of Georgia . In 1918 he obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree there . He then attended the Johns Hopkins University Medical School . He shared a room there with the later doctor Tinsley Randolph Harrison , with whom he had a lifelong friendship. He graduated from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore with a doctorate in medicine in 1922. Hoping for a job as a surgeon at Johns Hopkins, he stayed in Baltimore for the next three years. During this time he completed further training as a specialist in urology , worked for a year as an assistant doctor in the surgical department and interned ( externship ) in the department for ear, nose and throat medicine . In the summer of 1925 he moved to Boston , where he was to take up a permanent position as a surgeon at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital , but which he gave up in favor of a job at the Vanderbilt - "without even having unpacked his suitcase".

Vanderbilt University

In July 1925, Blalock took over the newly created position as a full-time senior surgeon at Vanderbilt University in Nashville , where his friend Harrison also worked. He was under Barney Brooks , Vanderbilt's first professor of surgery and director of the surgical department at Vanderbilt University Hospital. Blalock taught third and fourth year medical students and was responsible for the surgical research laboratory. During this time his research on the causes and treatment of hemorrhagic and traumatic shock falls . Through his experiments on dogs, he discovered that the traumatic shock is caused by loss of blood (hypovolemic shock). He advocated the use of blood plasma and blood products for immediate therapy. Based on this knowledge, numerous lives were saved during the Second World War . However, during these years Blalock suffered from tuberculosis in stages . The first work on shock treatment appeared in 1927; However, it had been written by his friend Harrison on the basis of the data obtained by Blalock, which Blalock could not put together due to his illness.

In 1938, the year Blalock became professor at Vanderbilt, Blalock attempted to artificially induce high blood pressure in the pulmonary circulation ( pulmonary hypertension ) in dogs by suturing the subclavian artery to the left pulmonary artery . Although the desired effect did not occur in these experiments, he took up the idea again in later years.

Johns Hopkins University

When Blalock was offered the position of senior surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1941, he insisted that his medical-technical assistant Vivien Thomas come with him. Both men had a close working relationship that would last for more than 30 years. Together they developed a shunt technique as a therapy for coarctation of the aorta (a narrowing of the main artery in the body in the area of ​​the aortic arch ). While they were working on this topic, she made Helen Taussig aware of the problem of congenital blue baby syndrome in children.

The cause of this disease is often a Fallot tetralogy (abbreviated ToF ), a combination of four heart malformations : ventricular septal defects , a riding aorta and pulmonary stenosis , which lead to an enlargement of the right half of the heart. Children with such a malformation suffer from a central lack of oxygen, which can already be externally visible through a blue to purple coloration of the skin , the mucous membranes as well as the lips and fingernails ( cyanosis ).

Blalock developed the idea of ​​surgical improvement of this condition from his earlier attempts at high blood pressure. His approach consisted in a connection ( anastomosis , English shunt ) of the subclavian ( subclavian ) with the pulmonary artery to conduct more oxygen-rich blood from the lungs to the left half of the heart, from where it is then pumped into the body. The surgical technique was perfected on dogs by Vivien Thomas. The first operation of this kind was performed by Blalock and Taussig on November 29, 1944 on the two-year-old Eileen Saxon; the visible blue color of the child disappeared immediately after the operation was completed. In this case the child's life could only be extended by two months; the operation itself was a pioneering work in pediatric cardiac surgery.

From 1941 to 1964 Blalock was director of the Department of Surgery at Johns Hopkins University.

Films about Blalock and his assistant Vivien Thomas

In 2003, the Public Broadcasting Service aired the documentary Partners of the Heart as part of the American Experience series , which is about the collaboration between Blalock and Vivien Thomas at Vanderbilt and Johns Hopkins Universities. Directed by Andrea Kalin , who wrote the script together with Lou Potter. Embedded in the documentation are flashbacks with Morgan Freeman as narrator; These flashbacks were directed by Bill Duke . In 2004, Partners of the Heart was awarded the Erik Barnouw Prize by the Organization of American Historians for the best historical documentation.

In 2004, the feature film Ein Werk Gottes about the collaboration between Blalock and Thomas was broadcast on HBO . Blalock is played by Alan Rickman , Thomas von Mos Def , directed by Joseph Sargent , and produced by Robert Cort. This TV production won three Emmys in 2004 and a Peabody Award in 2005 , among other awards .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Axel W. Bauer : Blalock, Alfred. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 185.
2. ^ Member History: Alfred Blalock. American Philosophical Society, accessed May 5, 2018 . 
3. ↑ Axel W. Bauer: Blalock, Alfred. In: Werner E. Gerabek et al. (Ed.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. Berlin / New York 2005, p. 185.
4. ^ A. Blalock, HB Taussig: The surgical treatment of malformations of the heart in which there is pulmonary stenosis or pulmonary atresia. In: Journal of the American Medical Association . Volume 128, 1945, p. 189.
5. ↑ Axel W. Bauer: Blalock, Alfred. In: Werner E. Gerabek et al. (Ed.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. Berlin / New York 2005, p. 185.
6. ^ PBS: American Experience - Partners of the Heart
7. ↑ American Experience - Partners Of The Heart (DVD): Morgan Freeman, Dr. Levi Watkins, Dr. J. Alex Haller Jr., John Dryden (IV), Dr. Helen Taussig, Dr. Denton Cooley et al. a.
8. ↑ Ronica Roth: Partners of the Heart
9. ↑ OAH Erik Barnouw Award Winners

literature

• Vivien T. Thomas: Partners of the Heart: Vivien Thomas and His Work With Alfred Blalock. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985, ISBN 0-8122-1634-2 .
• Katie McCabe: Like Something the Lord Made. In: Washingtonian. August 1989.
• Walter H. Merrill: What's Past is Prologue. In: Ann Thorac Surg . 68, 1999, pp. 2366-2375. PMID 10617047

Web links

• Alfred Blalock MD ( Medical Archives of Johns Hopkins University)
• The Alfred Blalock Collection ( Memento July 19, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (Medical Archives of Johns Hopkins University)
• Alfred Blalock, MD (Vanderbilt Medical Center)