Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 12, 1994 TAG: 9405120202
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By DAVID REED ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"When I begin, I'm going to say it's like a student doing his master's thesis on a physics project with Albert Einstein in the audience," Dr.Charles Kuntz said Wednesday.
Kuntz is completing a three-year residency program in veterinary surgery at the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine. The last step is to get his thesis endorsed by a panel of six inquisitors, including Lillehei, professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota.
In October 1991, Kuntz began researching open-heart surgery on dogs. He found that the procedure is rarely attempted - about 150 times on record - because it's expensive and often fails.
In human open-heart surgery, a heart-lung machine invented by Lillehei is used to keep oxygen in the blood routed outside the patient's body. But, in addition to the costs of surgery, the machine costs more than $1,000 and can be used only once. A study at the University of California at Davis in 1973 also concluded that using the machine during open-heart surgery on dogs was "too cumbersome" and traumatic to their blood supply, Kuntz said.
Some doctors are using cross circulation, a technique Lillehei used on humans in 1954 before using the heart-lung machine the following year. With cross circulation, a blood transfusion tube is set up and the donor dog takes over the heart function of the patient. But the success rate has been low.
Kuntz theorized that he could improve the procedure by installing a pump and reservoir bottle to regulate the blood flow and "making the system quite a bit more intricate."
When Kuntz ran the project past his father, a former professor of heart and lung surgery at the Medical College of South Carolina, he suggested calling Lillehei.
The return call was forwarded by pager to Kuntz one afternoon while he was buying lumber, and the student pitched his idea while standing next to the hardware store cash register.
"I was just overwhelmed by how receptive he's been and the fact that would take the time to talk frequently over the telephone," Kuntz said.
Lillehei, who also implanted the first cardiac pacemaker in a human in 1957, invited Kuntz to spend three weeks at his research laboratory while he was away from Minnesota on vacation.
Kuntz performed open-heart surgery on 12 research dogs and only one died, a survival rate more than 90 percent.
Kuntz met Lillehei at the Roanoke Airport on Wednesday night.
"He has an outstanding application of a technique that's well-known," Lillehei said. "That's why I've been so interested in his work.
"The importance of cross circulation in humans is that it made open-heart surgery possible 40 years ago when everyone thought it was impossible."
Lillehei said Kuntz's method could be widely used on dogs because it reduces the expense of the procedure and dogs "often become part of the family."
Kuntz said he hopes his success opens the field of open-heart surgery in veterinary medicine just as Lillehei's work did in human medicine.
"There are a lot of candidates for open-heart surgery that just go untreated," he said. "The dogs die because we don't have a good technique."
by CNB