Artery Welding

When a big artery is severed, the parallel, subsidiary blood pipelines only rarely function well enough to prevent gangrene; in the war in Tunisia, gangrene developed in 70% of severed artery cases. The standard technique of sewing severed blood vessels together, devised by the late Dr. Alexis Carrel, is successful only 40% of the time--under the best conditions. It was therefore a major medical event when Dr. Arthur H. Blakemore of Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons and Dr. Jere W. Lord of Cornell University medical school found a new way of welding broken arteries that succeeds about nine times out of ten. Last week, in the Journal of the American Medical Association, they gave full details.

Their method is simple, requiring only a piece of vein and a few bits of bloodvessel-sized vitallium tubing. (Vitallium is the non-irritating surgical alloy.) Given an artery with a section missing or damaged, the doctors snip each end neatly, then cut a section of one of the patient's own veins for a patch. (Loss of a vein is not dangerous, as other veins readily take over its work.)

A piece of vitallium tubing shorter than the vein section is slipped over it and the vein ends turned back over the tube like cuffs. One artery end is then slipped over each end of the cuffed tube. Result: the insides of vein and artery heal together in a permanent natural weld. The vitallium can be left in place forever.

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