Horace Smithy | |
|---|---|
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| Born | July 19, 1914 |
| Died | October 28, 1948 (aged 34) |
| Education | UVA School of Medicine |
| Years active | 1942–1948 |
| Medical career | |
| Field | Cardiac surgery |
| Institutions | Medical College of South Carolina |
| Research | Heart valve repair |
Horace Gilbert Smithy Jr. (July 19, 1914 – October 28, 1948) was an American cardiac surgeon who in 1948 performed the first successful mitral valve repair (mitral valvulotomy) since the 1920s. Smithy's work was complicated because it predated heart-lung machines or open heart surgery. Though his procedure did not become a definitive treatment for valvular heart disease, he introduced the technique of injecting novocaine into the heart to avoid arrhythmias during surgery, and he showed that it was feasible to access and operate on the heart's valves.
A graduate of the University of Virginia School of Medicine, Smithy completed a surgical residency in Charleston, South Carolina, and then practiced surgery at Roper Hospital in Charleston. He also began working with a colleague in a dog laboratory to devise a valvulotomy (surgical treatment for diseased heart valves). Smithy's interest in heart valve dysfunction was also personal; he suffered from narrowing of the aortic valve related to rheumatic heart disease.
As Smithy began to operate on a series of patients with heart valve disease, he started to correspond with eminent heart surgeon Alfred Blalock, hoping that ultimately Blalock would agree to perform a valvulotomy on him. Smithy had a patient come to Baltimore so that Blalock and Smithy could operate on the patient together. When that patient died on the operating table, Blalock refused to be involved with further surgery of that type. Smithy died at Roper Hospital of cardiac asthma, pneumonia and another attack of rheumatic fever. His death came a few months after he performed his first valvulotomy; he had been unable to convince anyone to perform the surgery on him.