The first open heart surgery in Malta

Abstract

Although in 1947 Professor P.P. Debono courageously closed a patent ductus arteriosus in a young patient, with quite good results, the operation itself was really an extended thoracotomy. The first ever open heart surgery to be performed in Malta, on the 8th November 1983, is the one about to be described: Throughout the time the heart was stopped; for over an hour, its work was taken over by a heart lung machine operated by local and foreign technicians, the latter having come over with the surgeon Mr. A Yates of Guy's Hospital, London, U.K. Besides the aortic valve replacement, the surgeon performed another cardiac operation, a mitral valvotomy on a young woman.