C. Walton Lillehei

C(larence) Walt(on) Lillehei (October 23, 1918–July 5, 1999), was an American surgeon who pioneered open-heart surgery, as well as numerous techniques, equipment and prostheses for cardiothoracic surgery.

C. Walt Lillehei was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He earned five degrees at the University of Minnesota, including his B.S. (with distinction) in 1939, his M.D. (Alpha Omega Alpha) in 1942, his M.S. in physiology in 1951, and his Ph.D. in surgery in 1951.

A Department of Surgery professor at the University of Minnesota from 1951 to 1967, Lillehei participated in the world's first successful open-heart operation using hypothermia In 1944, Alfred Blalock at Johns Hopkins University had begun successfully performing surgery on the great vessels around the heart to relieve the symptoms of tetralogy of Fallot, demonstrating that heart surgery could be possible. Young and brash, Lillehei completed, at age 35, the first successful surgical repair of the heart on September 2, 1952. That historic operation, using hypothermia, was led by his longtime friend and colleague, Dr. F. John Lewis.

Hypothermia, however, only gave a brief window during which surgery could be performed and was therefore not suited for complex congenital defects within the heart. To resolve this problem, Lillehei performed surgeries using cross-circulation, in which a donor was hooked up nearby to take up the pumping and oxygenation functions of the patient as he was being operated on. Using this technique, Lillehei led the team that performed successful repair of a ventricular septal defect on March 26, 1954. Although the repair was successful, the patient, 13-month old Gregory Glidden, died 11 days later of suspected pneumonia. Lillehei and his team continued to use cross-circulation for a total of 44 open-heart operations in the following year, of which 32 patients survived. These surgeries included the first repairs of the atrioventricular canal and tetralogy of Fallot. In July of that year, a successful operation was performed on Mike Shaw.

In 1958, Lillehei was responsible for the world's first use of a small, external, portable, battery-powered pacemaker, invented at his behest by Earl Bakken (whose then-small company, Medtronic, designed and repaired electronics for the University of Minnesota hospital). Lillehei also developed and implanted the world's first prosthetic heart valves: the Lillehei-Nakib toroidal disc (1966), the Lillehei-Kaster pivoting disc (1967), and the Kalke-Lillehei rigid bileaflet prosthesis (1968).

A dedicated educator, Lillehei trained more than 150 cardiac surgeons from 40 nations, including Christiaan Barnard (a fellow University of Minnesota Ph.D. recipient in the 1950s who went on to perform the world's first heart transplant in South Africa). In 1967, he was appointed Lewis Atterbury Stimson professor and chairman of the surgery department at Cornell Medical Center, New York. He returned to St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1975, where he became the director of medical affairs at St. Jude Medical, Inc. He was also named a clinical professor in the Department of Surgery at the University of Minnesota.

Lillehei's countless honors include the Bronze Star for World War II service in Italy, the 1955 Lasker Award, induction in 1993 into the Minnesota Inventors Hall of Fame, and the 1996 Harvey Prize in Science and Technology. In 1966-67, he served as president of the American College of Cardiology. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Medicine.