Heart Repair

Heart wounds used to be considered invariably fatal. Now front-line surgeons boldly operate on that vulnerable organ every week. Last week they reported the astonishing case of Pfc. Ray Shaffer Jr. of Greensburg, Pa. He was hit in the heart during a battle in Italy. The slug entered a heart chamber and was promptly pumped along with the heart's blood into his main artery. In a two-hour, seven-transfusion operation, Army surgeons 1) mended the wounded heart, 2) recovered the slug from Shaffer's abdomen, 3) gave it to him for a souvenir.

The war surgeon with the greatest heart operation record is probably Major Dwight Emary Harken, 34, formerly of Harvard Medical School and now at Army's 160th General Hospital in England. By last week, he had operated on 328 men with the terrifying diagnosis (made by X-ray): "foreign body in the heart," had saved all 328.

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