Helen Brooke TaussigDied 20 May 1986 at age 87 (born 24 May 1898).American physician who founded pediatric cardiology. She pioneered using X-rays and fluoroscopy to identify heart defects in newborns. With surgeon Alfred Blalock, she developed a surgical procedure for treating blue baby syndrome. After 1944, when the first Blalock-Taussig operation was developed, many blue babies were saved from invalidism or death. The Blalock-Taussig shunt (a surgical shunt made between the pulmonary artery and the aorta as treatment for tricuspid and pulmonary atresia) is named for her. In the early 1960s, Taussig was a major person in revealing and stopping the harm caused by the sedative drug thalidamide, which when taken by pregnant woman caused terrible deformations of their to newborn children. |
