t - New York Civil Liberties Union

291
Union-Endicott
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INVESTIGATION
Blue babies are born with
hearts that prevent their
blood from receiving much
oxygen. As a result, their skin
looks blue, and they are
weak and lack energy. Before
Taussig's discoveries, some
children born with this defect
died within days of birth.
Because Taussig was hard
of hearing, it was difficult for
her to hear a baby's heartbeat,
even with a stethoscope.
She was
forced to learn to
use her sense of
touch to distinguish
a normal heartbeat
---from-an-irregular-one~ -----
Her hands-on approach
.~
~ led her to discover that blue
~E"
ro babies have improper blood
'ól
ro flow between one part of the
heart and the lungs.
. .... ..
......
True-Blue Doctor
fevery thousand
. babies born in the
United States, eight have
broken hearts-that is, some
kind of heart disorder that
developed before they were
born. One of the most serious
of those problems is blue
baby syndrome.
Until just over 60 years
ago, blue babies were lucky
to live for more than a few
years. But then a woman
with her own childhood
challenges, Dr. Helén Taussig
(1898-1986), came along and
saved them.
An early brush with
whooping cough left Taussig
nearly deaf. As a student, she
struggled with dyslexia, a
learning disability that made
it difficult for her to decode
words and read. The doctor
overcame her difficulties and
attended Johns Hopkins
University, one of the few
schools that allowed women
to study medicine at the time.
There she concentrated on
pediatric cardiology, the
study of diseases and functions
of children's hearts.
SOLUTION
Taussig knew that rerouting
blood from the heart to the
lungs would help. Working
with two other doctors in
1944, she found a way to
place an artery between the
lungs and the heart. (An
artery is a blood vessel that
carries blood away from the
heart.) That gave the blood
going to the heart a burst
of oxygen.
CASE CLOSED
Eventually, open-heart
surgery made it possible to
correct the defect that
caused blue baby syndrome.
But until then, Taussig's
method saved thousands of
young lives around the world.
In 1964, President Lyndon
Johnson awarded Taussig the
Presidential Medal of
Freedom. A year later, she
became the first woman to
head the American Heart
Association.
Current Health 1 January 2006 27