Clarence Walton Lillehei

Lillehei led an active life and was immersed in research till the end of his life. He was diagnosed with cancer during his later years and breathed his last on 5 July 1999.

He was born as the son of Clarence and Elizabeth Lillehei in Minnesota. His father was a dentist.

From an early age he displayed sharp intelligence and a keen sense of technology. He liked to dismantle and rebuild technological gadgets.

As a young teen he planned to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a dentist. However, he soon changed his mind and decided to study medicine at the University of Minnesota.

He completed his surgical residency under Owen Wangensteen, the chairman of the University of Minnesota's department of surgery. Wangesteen was a brilliant surgeon and mentor under whose guidance Lillehei blossomed into a bright surgeon.

He earned his M.S. in physiology in 1951 and his Ph.D. in surgery the same year.

He became a member of the surgical faculty at the University of Minnesota Medical School in 1951 and would serve here till 1967.

In 1950, however, he was diagnosed with lymphosarcoma of the parotid gland and given only a 10% chance of survival. He underwent extensive head and neck surgery and grueling radiation therapy to beat the disease. Though the treatment left him with a permanent physical disfigurement, the gutsy doctor returned to his medical career after recovery.

Lillehei was deeply interested in cardiology and focused his attention on heart surgery. Up until the 1950s, cardiac surgery was very risky and the mortality rate was very high for patients undergoing heart operations.

In 1952, Lillehei and Dr. F. John Lewis performed the world’s first successful intracardiac repair of a human heart using hypothermia, thus ushering in the era of open-heart surgery which had been impossible till now.

Working along with his associates he introduced the concept of “cross-circulation”, in which the patient was connected to a human donor. The donor would serve as a living oxygenator while the patient’s heart was being operated upon. During 1954-55 he used this method to repair 45 hearts.

Lillehei was a pioneering cardiac surgeon whose discoveries and inventions have made complicated heart surgeries possible. He was part of the team that performed the world’s first open-heart surgery and he also devised equipment for cardiothoracic surgery.