In honor of Black History Month, UNMC Today is highlighting the contributions of African-Americans in medicine. The seven-part series continues today with Vivien Theodore Thomas, co-creator of the first surgical treatment of Blue-Baby Syndrome.
Vivien Theodore Thomas: co-creator of the first surgical treatment for Blue-Baby Syndrome
Vivien Theodore Thomas was born in Louisiana in 1910. In 1929, the high school graduate started college in Tennessee majoring in pre-medicine. Unable to continue college after the stockmarket crash, Thomas accepted a full-time job as a laboratory assistant at Vanderbilt University Medical School. His boss was Alfred Blalock, M.D., the first resident in surgery in the newly built Vanderbilt University Hospital.
At Vanderbilt, Blalock and Thomas did pioneering work on the nature and treatment of hemorrhagic and traumatic shock, demonstrating that surgical shock resulted primarily from the loss of blood. Their treatment of using plasma or whole blood transfusions following the onset of shock saved thousands of American soldiers’ lives during World War II.
In 1941, Dr. Blalock received dual appointments as surgeon-in-chief of Johns Hopkins University Hospital and chairman of the department of surgery at Johns Hopkins University Medical School. He took Thomas with him. Dr. Blalock’s extensive duties limited the amount of time he could devote to laboratory research so Thomas learned to perform the surgical operations and chemical determinations for their experiments, calculate the results and keep precise records. The two made history as co-developers of the “Blalock” clamp, the first clamp for temporary occlusion of the pulmonary artery and, more importantly, the first successful surgical treatment for “Blue-Baby” Syndrome.
A congenital heart malformation that robs the blood of oxygen, Blue-Baby Syndrome is a life-threatening condition signaled by a bluish or “cyanotic” cast to the skin. Said Dr. Blalock: “Vivien Thomas, my superb technician, and I, performed many experiments to develop some sort of arterial shunt that would furnish more blood to the lungs. Our first attack on the problem was to try to form in an animal a ‘blue-baby syndrome’ in order that we could work out a procedure for correction.”
On Nov. 29, 1944, Blalock and Helen Taussig, M.D., one of America’s leading pediatric cardiologists, performed a new surgical procedure to bypass cardiac defects that restricted blood flow to the lungs of infants. The procedure joined an artery leaving the heart to an artery leading to the lungs, giving the blood a second chance at oxygenation. It was the first blue baby operation and came to be known as the Blalock-Taussig Shunt. William P. Longmire, M.D., a first assistant during that operation, recalled in 1965 how “Vivien Thomas stood behind Dr. Blalock the whole time and offered a number of helpful suggestions in regard to the actual technique of the procedure.” The Blalock-Taussig Shunt has saved thousands of newborn infants from chronic circulatory failure.
Although Thomas never completed his original plans for medical school, he was supervisor of Johns Hopkins surgical laboratories for 35 years and later appointed instructor in surgery at Johns Hopkins University Medical School. In 1976, Thomas was awarded an honorary doctor of laws degree by Johns Hopkins University. He retired in 1979 as instructor emeritus at Johns Hopkins University Medical School. In 1985, he published an autobiography, “Pioneering Research in Surgical Shock and Cardiovascular Surgery: Vivien Thomas and His Work with Alfred Blalock. (Taken from Faces of Science: African Americans in the Sciences).