Broken Heart Syndrome...Fact or Fiction?

Did you know that you can actually die from a broken heart?

The medical community calls it takotsubo cardiomyopathy, stress cardiomyopathy, apical ballooning syndrome or, quite simply, broken heart syndrome.

But a heart condition by any other name…

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A Brief History of Anesthesiology

Perhaps the biggest miracle of modern surgery is that you get to sleep through it. This wasn’t always the case. Like every branch of medicine, the discovery and study of anesthesia has been a long one, full of twists and turns, dead ends, weird ideas and incredible innovation.

As Sarasota Memorial Hospital celebrates its 100th anniversary—and the recent addition of FPG Anesthesiology—let’s look back at this winding path of medical invention.

And be glad we’ve come so far.

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Celebrating Heroes in Medicine: Vivien Thomas

The year is 1944 and deep within the infant ward at Johns Hopkins a 15-month-old baby named Eileen Saxon gasps for breath under an oxygen tent. Her skin is a deep blue, her lips a dangerous purple. She has a heart condition—a complex combination of four congenital defects in the structure of her heart—preventing proper blood flow to the lungs and slowly starving her body of oxygen. The doctors at her bedside call it tetralogy of Fallot. Parents like the Saxons call it “Blue Baby Syndrome.” They know most die in the first two years. And they know there is no treatment for their baby girl.

Which makes it even more surprising when a cardiovascular surgeon named Dr. Alfred Blalock tells them he can save her life.

But it will be decades still before the world is ready to acknowledge the man at Blalock’s shoulder, a carpenter’s apprentice turned surgical savant who, with no college education or medical degree, helped usher in the age of modern cardiac surgery.

His name is Vivien Thomas and he was the only black man in a lab coat at Johns Hopkins that day, 30 years before the university would allow its first black surgical resident. His story defies history. His impact is only now being fully recognized.

Learn more about Vivien Thomas