SURGICAL PROBLEMS ASSOCIATED WITH TREATMENT OF PATENT DUCTUS ARTERIOSUS

TWENTY-FOUR operations on 23 patients with patent ductus arteriosus form a small series. However, problems encountered in the care of these persons may be of interest. Their ages varied from 2 to 36 years, with two males and 21 females.The diagnoses in these cases were made by Dr. Benjamin Gasul and his associates at the Cook County Children's and Mount Sinai Hospitals and by a number of cardiologists and internists at the Presbyterian Hospital. Five patients were subjected to cardiac catheterization by Dr. James Campbell in the Cardiovascular Laboratory of the Presbyterian Hospital. In all patients operated on to date for a patent ductus the pathologic process diagnosed was present and was found at the usual location, in the left mediastinum. Drs. Benjamin Gasul and Paul Casas have shown by retrograde angiocardiography that the aortic septal defects can now be differentiated from the patent ductus. Prior to this, diagnosis