WOUNDS OF THE HEART

Abstract

I. INTRODUCTION The successful suture of a wound of the heart is not an uncommon surgical feat. To the individual surgeon, however, the experience of performing the operation is rare, and the subject may therefore receive but little consideration until the occasion for carrying out the operation is presented. In the numerous case reports of suture of wounds of the heart little attention has been directed toward the method of placing the sutures for the closure of the wound. "The surgeon having this job in hand will take it all in the day's work, and just as he plunges his hand into the abdomen into a mass of blood in a case of ruptured spleen or in a case of ruptured tubal gestation and seizes the bleeding spot, so he will now plunge his hand into the pericardium and seize the heart, and, by digital compression, control the hemorrhage, and