The Section of Thoracic Surgery was well established by 1940 under the leadership of Dr. John Alexander. In 1932 he had instituted the first two-year training program in thoracic surgery. His trainees played a large part in the rapid development of thoracic surgery as a specialty during World War II when this branch of surgery came of age.
Following the war, even more dramatic changes occurred. A major part of thoracic surgery has always been the surgical treatment of infection, particularly tuberculosis. With the discovery of effective anti-tuberculosis drugs, resection of pulmonary tissue infected with tuberculosis became safe, and pulmonary resection replaced the collapse procedures previously employed.
Shortly, drug therapy of tuberculosis was found to be remarkably effective without resection of pulmonary tissue.
The sanatoriums emptied, and new developments in thoracic surgery replaced the many operations for tuberculosis that had occupied so much of the section's attention. The same changes occurred in the treatment of other pulmonary infections.
Dr. John Alexander died in 1954 and was succeeded by Dr. Cameron Haight, who had pioneered during the 1940s in the treatment of esophageal atresia in the newborn.
The first open-heart operation at the University of Michigan was performed in 1956 and soon cardiac surgery became the most important part of the section's activity.
The thoracic surgery staff soon established Michigan as one of the major centers in the country for the surgical treatment of heart disease, particularly congenital heart disease.
With the field of cardiac surgery firmly established, members of the section turned their attention to heart and lung transplantation and, in 1968, Dr. Donald Kahn carried out the first of several successful heart transplantations. Dr. Haight died in September 1970, and Dr. Herbert Sloan was appointed to replace him.
Fred J. Hodges
The University of Michigan, an Encyclopedic Survey Supplement, Pages 207, 208
