After experiencing an increase of cardiac arrhythmias in 1973, Gary R. Weisman, a PhD student in the Department of Chemistry, visited UW-Madison’s Student Health Services. As a child, Weisman had been diagnosed with a congenital Ventricular Septal Defect (VSD), which is an abnormal opening in the wall between the main pumping chambers of the heart. This defect allows oxygen-rich blood to move back into the lungs instead of being pumped to the rest of the body. Until these cardiac arrhythmias, Weisman had been asymptomatic and described himself as an otherwise healthy PhD student.
During the visit to student health services, Weisman’s doctor listened to his heart and asked if he had an extra hour to spare. She made a phone call and, a short time later, a team of medical personnel arrived from the hospital and they all listened to Weisman’s heart.
“I was very lucky to be in the right place at the right time,” Weisman said.
This medical team told Weisman that he would likely require heart surgery. They scheduled him for a cardiac catheterization, a procedure that would give Weisman’s doctors important details about his heart muscle, heart valves, and the blood vessels in his heart. The cardiac catheterization confirmed what the physicians had heard, that Weisman’s VSD was very high and after years of leakage, it had caused a deformation of his aortic valve to the point he was experiencing aortic insufficiency.
On Nov. 1, 1973, Dr. Donald R. Kahn and his team successfully operated on Weisman to patch his VSD and repair his prolapsed aortic valve. Dr. Kahn was a pioneer in the field of cardiothoracic surgery. In 1970, he was recruited to be the Chair of the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery at UW-Madison. With Cardiothoracic Surgery gaining divisional status only three years prior, the Department Chair, Dr. Anthony Curreri, hoped that Dr. Kahn would lead the division to embrace new advances and technologies. Four months before Dr. Kahn repaired Weisman’s VSD, he had performed the first heart transplant in the state of Wisconsin.
Fifty years after the operation, Weisman’s heart repair continues to be a success. His cardiologists at Brigham Mass General tell him that he is among the first cohort to survive so long after the type of corrective open-heart surgery that he had at UW-Madison.
Weisman and his wife, both UW-Madison alumni, are grateful for the life-saving surgery that Weisman had at Wisconsin Surgery fifty years ago.