Alfred Blalock (April 5, 1899 – September 15, 1964) was an American surgeon most noted for his work on the medical condition of shock as well as Tetralogy of Fallot— commonly known as Blue baby syndrome. According to Dr. Denton Cooley, who was then beginning work on his medical degree, “People stopped and stared at Thomas, flying down corridors in his white lab coat. White lab coats were worn by doctors or people performing a task that required expertise. In 1941, Blalock and Thomas take on the challenge of blue babies and invent bypass surgery. Vivien T. Thomas was tasked with creating a blue-baby-like condition in a dog, and correcting it by means of pulmonary-to-subclavian anastomosis (increasing blood flow to the lungs). See more ideas about thomas, blue baby syndrome, black history. By 1940, Blalock’s research had put him head and shoulders above any young surgeon in America. Helen Taussig’s idea for treating blue baby syndrome was to create a connection between the aorta and the pulmonary artery, increasing blood flow to the lungs. 12.Why did Vivien Thomas cause such a controversy when he went out of the lab in his white lab coat? As an intern, Dr. Cooley said he saw both Thomas and Blalock devise an operation to save infants born with a heart defect that sends blood past their lungs called “Blue Babies.”. He was an assistant to surgeon Alfred Blalock in Blalock's experimental animal laboratory at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee and later at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. The operation she was about to undergo would be the first attempt to treat her congenital heart condition, which was called the tetralogy of Fallot or blue baby syndrome. What mattered was that Alfred Blalock and Vivien Thomas could do historic things together that neither could do alone”. Remembering Vivien Thomas, the young black man who invented the "Blue Baby" syndrome treatment - Face2Face Africa Vivien Thomas, a talented carpenter from Nashville, Tennessee who was born in New Iberia, Louisiana on August 29, 1910, created a technique to fix ‘Blue Baby Syndrome’ via heart surgery. Helen Brooke Taussig is known as the founder of pediatric cardiology for her innovative work on "blue baby" syndrome. They developed a number of novel animal models. In nearly two years of laboratory work involving some 200 dogs, demonstrated that the corrective procedure was not lethal, thus persuading Blalock that the operation could be safely attempted on a human patient. The procedure to correct Blue Baby was painstakingly worked out by Thomas over a two-year period. Thomas was born in New Iberia, Louisiana in 1910, the son of a carpenter. The School of Medicine announced on May 26 the establishment of the Vivien Thomas Fund for Diversity to increase the number of minorities in the academic medicine talent pool. Vivien was instrumental to preparing experiments and for the surgery itself. Vivien Thomas: Pioneer of Blue Baby Surgery Vivien Thomas was described as “the most untalked-about, unappreciated, unknown giant in the African American community” by one of his colleagues, Dr. Levi Watkins, an African American surgeon who performed the … Directed by Joseph Sargent. The Blue Baby Operation. Thomas helped train many of the surgeons at Johns Hopkins in the delicate techniques necessary for heart and lung surgery, and served as supervisor of the surgical laboratories at Johns Hopkins for thirty-five years. Vivien Thomas was son to a carpenter and grandson to a slave. Apr 30, 2018 - Explore Kay Smith's board "Vivien Thomas" on Pinterest. She could only take a few steps before beginning to breathe heavily. 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