One of the major advances in medical science in recent years—the ability of surgeons to perform open heart operations —has brought with it some interesting and challenging sidelights for researchers.It is on one of these important sidelights that a team of doctors from Louisiana State university's school of medicine is concentrating.
The study, revealed by Dr. Jack C. Geer, associate professor of pathology at LSU, concerns the relationship of congenital and certain acquired heart diseases with secondary I defects of the blood vessels of the lung or the lung itself. ! "It is important because the correction of heart defects will do patients no good if the secondary disease has advanced beyond a certain stage," said Dr. Geer. "In fact, the patient may die shortly after the operation because the delicate balance between the functioning of the heart and lungs has been upset."
