University of Minnesota Medical Complex

Because I tend to prefer small educational environments, I am surprised at how much I loved going to the University of Minnesota.  The opportunities and energy I found on the campus appealed to me and made me happy. This photo is a long-range shot of the medical complex as seen from across the Mississippi River.  If you max the photo you can see the "Health" sign in the middle of the prominent red building.

It was on this campus that Dr. C. Walton Lillehei taught and practiced. Dr Lillehei pioneered a direct, safe approach to open heart operations in the 1950s, he was known as the “father of open heart surgery.” Indeed, hardly any other cardiac surgeon has introduced a greater number of innovative techniques and concepts.

Another leading heart surgeon at the U was Dr. Richard Varco. On Sept. 2, 1952, Dr. Varco and colleagues at the University of Minnesota performed the first successful operation on a beating human heart, saving a 5-year-old girl who had been born with a heart murmur.

Until then, surgeons had found it impossible to perform open cardiac procedures because the heart pulsated with blood. Dr. Varco's team, led by Dr. C. Walton Lillehei and Dr. F. John Lewis, used a risky technique that had worked on animals: cutting off the flow of blood to the heart and lowering the patient's body temperature, stretching the amount of time she could survive without oxygenated blood.

1900 Antoine de Saint-Exupery