ThoughSurgical Technician Vivien T. Thomas was apart of medical history with his rolein the “blue baby” operation at John Hopkins Hospital during the 1940’s, it wasnot until recent years that he was able to receive his much deservedrecognition for helping open heart surgery become a success.
Vivien T.Thomas was born in New Iberia on August 29, 1910 but his family later moved toNashville, Tennessee.
In 1929, heenrolled as a premedical student at Tennessee Agricultural and IndustrialCollege. In January 1930, Thomas went to work for Surgeon Alfred Blalock in hislaboratory. Thomas learned to perform the surgical operations and chemicaldeterminations needed for their experiments, to calculate the results and tokeep precise records; he remained a key associate throughout Blalock’s career.
On Nov. 29,1944 Thomas along with Blalock made medical history by performing the first”blue baby” operation, a condition that is often signaled by a bluish or”cyanotic” cast to the skin. The procedure joined an artery leaving the heartto an artery leading to the lungs, in an attempt to give the blood a secondchance at oxygenation.
Operating onthe heart was considered impossible in the 1940s when Thomas helped design andperfect in animal models the operation imagined by Blalock and pediatriccardiologist Helen Taussig to repair the heart defect. This became known as theBlalock-Taussig shunt. Thomas’ intellect and skills had won him the post ofBlalock’s lab tech, but due to racial inequalities it took more than 25 yearsfor him to be credited publicly for his role in devising the “blue baby”surgery.
“The idea ofthe blue baby operation came from Helen Taussig,” said Gary Stevens,spokesperson for John Hopkins Hospital. “Dr. Blalock and Vivien figured outtogether how to do the procedure. He (Thomas) was a vital member of the team.It was no one person who created the procedure. It was a team workingtogether.”
According toThe John Hopkins website www.hopkinsmedicine.org, regardless of the variance inthe stories recounting the origination of the procedure; it is clear Blalocktogether with Thomas, continued to move forward with the problem of providingoxygen to the pulmonary artery. The shunt first tried at Vanderbilt ultimatelyprovided the answer.
Theoperation was first performed on a very ill, high-risk patient in 1944.Although the frail child died months later in a second operation, the childsurvived long enough to demonstrate the survival of a surgical procedure thatwould save the lives of tens of thousands of children.
The “bluebaby” operation is considered a key step in the development of adult open-heartsurgery.
Thomassupervised the surgical laboratories at Hopkins for over 35 years, and in 1976he was appointed instructor in surgery at the Johns Hopkins University Schoolof Medicine. Also that year Johns Hopkins University awarded him the honorarydegree Doctor of Laws. Upon his retirement in 1979, he became instructoremeritus of surgery. Thomas died in 1985.
In May 2004HBO premiered “Something the Lord Made” which cast rapper Mos Def as Thomas.The film tells the story of the “blue baby” procedure.
In the May17, 2004 issue of the newspaper at John Hopkins University, The JHU Gazette,Levi Watkins, a professor of cardiac surgery at the School of Medicine said,”the film shows what two people, black and white, can do working together totranscend racial barriers.”
The movietold a story about a black man that many weren’t aware of but at John HopkinsHospital, Thomas was no secret.
“VivienThomas has been famous around here for decades,” Stevenson said.
