Dwight Emary Harken, MD, an all-American surgical giant: Pioneer cardiac surgeon, teacher, mentor

Abstract

Criticism of pioneering is always the tool of men frustrated by their own inability to create.-Dwight E. Harken I cannot deny the fact that it is difficult for me to describe my first teacher in cardiac surgery. It is as if you have come face to face with a sheer granite cliff and are trying to work out how to get to the top. The personality, the achievements, the legend are all daunting. Dwight Harken (b. 1910) (Figure 1) came from the small town of Osceola, Iowa, where his father, a family physician, would visit his patients on horseback. Dwight, like many other promising young physicians, began his specialization at the Bellevue Hospital in New York City. He did postgraduate studies at the famous Royal Brompton Hospital in London, working with the renowned thoracic surgeon Tudor Edwards. 1 When the Normandy invasion took place in 1944, he became a lieutenant-colonel in the medical corps and acquired a good reputation for removing bullets and shrapnel from the chests of 134 wounded soldiers-78 within or in relation to the great vessels and 56 in or in relation to the heart-without losing a single one. 2 Techniques at that time were primitive and, of course, there was no heartlung machine. He would therefore make a hole in the heart or blood vessel, remove the foreign body, and then suture it rapidly with the blood spurting up to the ceiling! The operation required nerves of steel and stamina, qualities that Dwight must have had after being an amateur boxer. As expressed by R. Meade, this was the greatest technical advance in chest surgery during World War II. 3 Further, F. B. Berry called this series "the first consistently successful operations in this area." 4 Returning to the USA after the war, he joined the staff of Harvard under Professor Elliott Cutler, a pioneer who had

Penetrating and blunt injuries of the heart - an abdominal surgeon’s personal experience in Serbia

“…The patient was a young male with a stab wound to the left ventricle. After initial improvement, patient died on the third postoperative day [15]. The first successful suture of the heart is considered to be the one performed by Ludwig Rehn on September 9 th , 1896 in Frankfurt am Mein.…”

“…After a 75 min long operation, the man recovered completely [17]. First large series of successfully managed heart wounds was published by Dwight Harken, American war surgeon [14,15].…”

Sir Magdi H. Yacoub, the Leonardo da Vinci of cardiac surgery

“…This was an unprecedented catastrophe that Harken would surely have christened "the Paolo maneuver"! 16 Blood was running all over the floor, and Magdi was summoned. Donning gown and gloves but not stopping to scrub, he took the surgeon's place.…”

Risk of permanent pacemaker implantation after transcatheter aortic valve replacement: How do we manage beyond risk assessment?

“…1 Since 1960, when Dwight Harken performed the first in-situ aortic valve replacement with a ball-in-cage mechanical valve, cardiothoracic surgeons have been dramatically improving patients' lives. 2 The implications of how we treat this condition will become amplified by an aging US population and an increased incidence of AS with age. 3 At its inception, surgical aortic valve replacement was recognized to have trade-offs including injury to the native atrioventricular (AV) conduction system.…”