Thread by @FredWuMD

Dr. Helen Taussig, considered to be the founder of pediatric cardiology and best known for her role in developing the Blalock-Taussig shunt operation for "blue babies," was born 120 years ago today. Happy birthday, Dr. Taussig! #CHD

As several others have pointed out, Dr. Taussig persisted in the face of great adversity—no small part of which was due to her gender at a time when medicine was dominated by men—to become one of the most influential physicians of our time. A few highlights...

Harvard Medical School missed a few opportunities to claim what is now known as the Blalock-Taussig shunt. When she initially expressed interest in a medical career, Harvard allowed Dr. Taussig to sit in on some courses but would not issue a woman any credit toward a degree.

Instead, Dr. Taussig took the advice of an anatomy professor at Boston University and applied to @HopkinsMedicine, which had been the first school to accept women on an equal basis as men (as a condition for receiving a generous endowment), and was admitted to the class of 1927.

Taussig failed to secure a medicine residency at Johns Hopkins when another woman filled their female quota, but she accepted an offer to study cardiology for a year. This led to a pediatrics residency, and upon completion, she was appointed head of the new cardiology clinic.

In 1938, Dr. Robert Gross of @BostonChildrens performed the first PDA ligation. Recognizing that her tetralogy of Fallot patients with open ductuses fared better, Dr. Taussig sought him out to ask whether he could *build* a ductus for these patients.

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A story that Gross replied, “I close ductuses, I don’t create them,” is likely apocryphal. Rather, Taussig has recounted that Gross told her, “I’ve built lots of ductuses; it’s quite easy.” Still, he expressed that he was not interested in her idea and later came to regret that.

A short time later, Dr. Alfred Blalock and his partner, Vivien Thomas, came to Johns Hopkins. In them, Taussig found a more receptive audience, and roughly a year later, their collaboration resulted in the now famous operation on 15-month-old Eileen Saxon.

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Although the operation is now known as the Blalock-Taussig shunt, a very interesting paper by @pedcard50 details some surprising shade thrown at Taussig by surgeons who disputed her role in the conception of the Blalock-Taussig shunt. (It's worth reading!) sci-hub.tw/10.1017/S10479…

.@pedcard50 says in his paper that “surgeons tend to side with Blalock, as pediatric cardiologists do with Taussig,” but one has to wonder how much her gender has to do with the “controversy.” The more salient question is why Vivien Thomas was *not* given any credit for his part.

In any case, there should be no question that Dr. Taussig conceived of the idea of creating an arterial shunt for palliating tetralogy of Fallot. But her accomplishments don’t stop there!

In 1959, Dr. Taussig became the first woman in the history of the Johns Hopkins University College of Medicine to be promoted to full professor. In 1965, she became the first woman to named President of the American Heart Association.

In 1964, Dr. Taussig received the Medal of Freedom from President Lyndon B. Johnson. She received the prestigious Albert Lasker Award (sometimes referred to as the "American Nobels") together with Dr. Blalock and Dr. Gross in 1965.

In 1962, she went to Germany to investigate the causes of an epidemic of phocomelia that had been reported in Europe and found evidence to support its link to thalidomide. Returning to the US, she testified before Congress, ensuring thalidomide would never be approved by the FDA.

As the honorary chair of the Physician’s Committee for Social Responsibility, she advocated for war-injured Vietnamese children. She was an advocate for a woman’s right to control her own body and worked on behalf of abortion reform after her retirement. She is quoted here:

In the 1970s, she was an outspoken proponent of the need for a nationalized health insurance, expressing concern about rising health care costs and about quality of life for people who were born with severe congenital malformations.

Dr. Taussig trained an estimated 130 fellows in her career, with at least 34 going on to themselves become heads of cardiology or pediatric cardiology.

Dr. Taussig died 32 years ago, killed in a car crash at the age of 87. At the time of her death, she was actively researching the embryology of heart defects in birds. Her last paper was published posthumously in @JACCJournals. onlinejacc.org/content/12/4/1…

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