One of the historical milestones of congenital cardiac surgery was performed at the Johns Hopkins Hospital on November 29th, 1944. Up to that day, most infants and children with congenital heart disease (the then so-called "blue babies") had in fact no hope for cure, and died as a consequence of their heart condition. Because of their abnormalities, many children suffered from chronic lack of oxygen, and followed the unfortunate course of their disease to their premature death.
Doctor Alfred Blalock first offered these children the possibility of increasing their oxygen levels, by creating a connection between oxygen-rich and oxygen-deprived blood vessels (the "Blalock-Taussig shunt"). After that first successful operation, hundreds of children traveled to Baltimore to become pink again. Over the ensuing decades, many more underwent ever more complex operations, to correct anomalies that affect age groups from the neonatal period to adulthood.
