What even is a blue baby ? It is not a term heard so much these days but was given to those infants born with congenital heart defects. Hole-in-the-heart babies. Atrial Septal Defect, Atrioventricular Septal Defect and Ventricular Septal Defect are three of the congenital heart defects caused when the wall between the ventricles in the heart do not close completely before birth. Today there are about 1800 babies born each year in the US with this condition.
Who is this boy from the northern suburbs of Wellington ?
His name was Brian Boyes. After leaving Wellington College he went on to enrol in a medical intermediate year at Victoria University before studying medicine at Otago University in Dunedin. While at Otago he changed his name by deed-poll following his mother's wishes and possibly coinciding with the loss of his father. For the remainder of his life, he was known as Brian Barratt-Boyes.
He graduated from Otago in 1946 with a Bachelor of Medicine and a Bachelor of Surgery, later a Master of Surgery in 1962. He lectured at Otago after his graduation and spent a year as a house surgeon at Wellington Hospital. He was appointed as a registrar at Palmerston North Hospital in 1950 and became a fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in 1952.
The senior surgeon at Palmerston North had connections with the Mayo Clinic in the United States, and it was through those connections that Brian obtained his first overseas fellowship in cardiothoracic surgery from 1953-1955. While at the Mayo he became interested in heart and lung bypass machines. In 1956 on a Nuffield Travelling Scholarship, he spent a year in Bristol, England. While there he had the opportunity to further develop the British designed Melrose bypass machine.
In 1957 he was recruited back to New Zealand by the surgeon-in-charge at Greenlane Hospital in Auckland as senior cardiothoracic surgeon with a remit to set up open-heart surgery. By this time Greenlane had been designated the sole cardiac surgical centre for the entire country. Brian would remain at Greenlane for the rest of his career despite receiving many offers from overseas through that time.
A heart-lung bypass machine had been imported from Britain by the Auckland Hospital Board in 1957 at his urging. It cost £3000. When it arrived, some parts were missing, and some Kiwi ingenuity was employed to manufacture and modify the missing pieces.
Brian Barratt-Boyes performed the first hole-in-the-heart surgery on a 10 year old on 3 September 1958 and made history in New Zealand. He was involved in the development of an external pacemaker that enabled the heart to be restarted after bypass surgery. The first permanent pacemaker was implanted in 1961.
He didn't rest here though, going on to claim long-term international achievement in the field of heart valve replacements by pioneering homograft (human donor) replacement valves as opposed to artificial valves.
In 1965 he organised a conference of overseas cardiac surgeons in Auckland, enhancing Greenlane's standing as an international cardiac centre of repute. His former mentor from the Mayo Clinic was guest of honour and amongst the attendees was a young unknown heart surgeon from Cape Town, South Africa; Christiaan Barnard who would perform the world's first heart transplant in 1967,
In 1969 by using the technique of deep hypothermia, introduced in Japan, but perfected in New Zealand by himself, Brian Barratt-Boyes was able to perform open-heart surgery on neonates. Before this, only palliative operations had been performed on small babies, in the hope they could be kept alive until they were able to withstand major surgery.
He was made a Commander of the Order of the Bristish Empire (CBE) in 1966 and knighted in 1971. He received many awards and honours within New Zealand and from overseas. He was a talented pianist (several other cardiac surgeons I have known seem to share this skill) and carpenter.
Sir Brian Barratt-Boyes died in Cleveland, Ohio on 8 March 2006 from complications following a cardiac surgery.
He was a 3rd cousin to my father, their great grandparents Mary and Henry John Barratt being siblings. Mary, the eldest of the family who will have carried memories of London in the 1830s with her, and Henry the youngest, born in Wellington in this new land of opportunity.
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