Looking for a way to repair aneurysms in the thoracic aorta without causing ischemic damage to the spinal cord, DeBakey and his colleagues experimented with hypothermia. Denver surgeon Henry Swan had used hypothermia successfully for brief open-heart surgeries since 1953. During the years before heart-lung bypass machines were perfected, DeBakey found that hypothermia could prevent spinal cord damage during aneurysm surgery.
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