Development of the Blalock-Taussig Shunt

The Blalock-Taussig shunt was developed at Johns Hopkins in the early 1940s as a surgical way to send more blood to the lungs of infants born with heart defects such as tetralogy of Fallot and pulmonary atresia, the usual causes of blue baby syndrome. The idea began with the cardiologist Helen B. Taussig, who had noticed that children with a cyanotic heart defect and a patent ductus arteriosus lived longer than those without one, and who reasoned that a surgical connection could copy the duct. She took the problem to the surgeon Alfred Blalock and his laboratory assistant Vivien Thomas. Thomas worked out the subclavian-to-pulmonary artery connection in about two hundred laboratory dogs, adapted the instruments, and coached Blalock through the first operations on infants. The procedure was first named for Blalock and Taussig alone, and later accounts argue that Thomas deserved equal credit, so the attribution is a standing historical dispute. The record here describes what was held, and is not medical advice.