Word: harkens
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Dates: during 1960-1960
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Surgeon Dwight E. Harken, 49, operated on Mrs. Richardson to free the valve leaflets. Radical as it was, this surgery gave only temporary relief. Blood still poured back into the heart. What Dr. Harken wanted was an artificial valve. Plastic valves have been developed by Washington's Dr. Charles Hufnagel, but they cannot be placed as close to the heart as surgeons would like, and they click audibly. Dr. Harken went to work with designers and technicians at Davol Rubber Co. in Providence, and they devised what he calls a "caged ball valve...
...resembled a double bird cage. A silicone rubber ball, three-fourths of an inch in diameter, is encased in a slim, steel-wire cage in which it can move freely up and down. This in turn is enclosed in a second cage. In a ten-hour operation recently, Surgeon Harken removed one leaflet of Mary Richardson's faltering valve. Into the slit in the aorta wall he stitched a piece of Ivalon sponge, to which the bird-cage valve was attached so that it snuggled into the heart-aorta junction. Mrs. Richardson's tissues grew into the sponge...