Vascular Surgery 1902 – Successfully Suturing Blood Vessels

The surgeon Julius Comroe Jr. said: 

“Between 1901 and 1910, using experimental animals, [the French surgeon] Alexis Carrel performed every trick and developed every technique known to vascular surgery today.” 

Carrel won the Nobel Prize in 1912 for his groundbreaking work in surgical grafting and reconnecting arteries and veins.

Before Carrel's methods, suturing blood vessels (joining them surgically) often damaged their inner lining, leading to fatal blood clots. Surgeons avoided vascular surgery, and many patients who could have been saved died. To make such surgery possible, Carrel took stitching lessons from expert local embroiderers who used the finest needles and thread. Remarkably, Carrel soon developed a new method of suturing vessels, still used today, that minimized certain damage by turning the ends of cut vessels back like cuffs. He also coated his fine needles and sutures with petroleum jelly to avoid further damage to delicate vessels. Previously, injured vessels were generally treated by tying them off or amputating the affected limbs.

In 1908, because their blood types were compatible, Carrel sewed a father's blood vessel to one in his sick baby's leg, performing what some call the first modern blood transfusion. The father served as both blood pump and source for the baby, who had intestinal bleeding. 

Carrel also successfully transplanted a kidney from one dog to another, but problems with immune rejection prevented him from performing such transplants in humans. 

In the 1930s, he worked with the aviator Charles Lindbergh to develop a perfusion pump that kept organs alive outside the body during surgery. Lindburgh once said, “Carrel's mind flashed at the speed of light between the scientific world and the mystical world of God”. 

Carrel's pioneering methods paved the way for many successful operations today:

• Organ transplants 
• Modern heart surgery
• Bypass operations 
• Tissue grafts

About the Article Image: Alexis Carrel and the vessel-suturing method he developed.

Historical Figures Mentioned in the Article: Alexis Carrel (1873–1944), Charles Augustus Lindbergh (1902– 1974)

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