Over the past century, heart operations that once were unthinkable have become commonplace. Thousands of times a day, surgeons graft arteries, fix structural defects or transplant entire hearts.

A heart-lung machine takes over the work of the heart and lungs during surgeries. It oxygenates and circulates blood when a person's heart or lungs can't work properly. While essential, using a ...

Richard N. Sarns was a machinist from Mount Clemens, Mich., who attended the local high school in 1944, spent some time in the Navy, studied at the Lawrence Institute of Technology, worked for the ...

The creation of heart-lung bypass was clearly "one of the major milestones of modern medicine," said Dr. James K. Kirklin, the former director of cardiothoracic surgery at the University of Alabama at ...