Emergency open heart surgery for acquired heart disease.

Eighteen patients, 15 to 74 years of age, in intractable and life-threatening heart failure underwent emergency open heart surgery. There were 14 long term survivors. One hundred percent mortality was predicted withont the application of surgery. The cause of failure was valvular heart disease in 14 and coronary heart disease in four patients. Assisted circulation during the most critical period, namely, the interval between the induction of anesthesia and the institution of total cardiopulmonary bypass, proved life-saving, at least in five patients. On the basii of this study it is postulated that no heart patient is too sick to be operated upon if he is dying from a surgically remediable underlying cardiac condition.