Abstract
IN 1939, Dr Robert Gross, a pediatric surgeon, ligated the ductus arteriosus in a child.1Shortly thereafter, Dr Helen Taussig proposed that cyanotic children with diminished pulmonary blood flow could be helped by creating a "patent ductus."1Five years after the first ductus was divided, Dr Taussig made the clinical diagnosis of tetralogy of Fallot, and Dr Alfred Blalock created a ductus by turning down a subclavian artery and suturing its end to the side of the pulmonary artery, establishing the Blalock-Taussig anastomosis.1Thus began a therapeutic era that witnessed one of the most successful rehabilitation programs in medicine.1In the last 25 years, more than a half million patients with functionally important cardiac malformations have reached adulthood by virtue of surgical and/ or medical treatment.2 Cardiac surgery remains the most dramatic and useful therapeutic intervention in patients with congenital heart disease, but complete cures are

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