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Open heart surgery in MOTAT’s LOVE/SCIENCE
In 2021 MOTAT (Museum of Transport and Technology) opened an exhibition named LOVE/SCIENCE which explored the people and science that made the innovation in Aotearoa New Zealand possible. The exhibition featured the story of Helen Harris (née Arnold), the first to undergo open heart surgery in our country.
Explore the video from LOVE/SCIENCE explaining the story of Helen Harris' courage, and surgeon Sir Brian Barratt-Boyes' trailblazing surgery.
On 3 September 1958 a brave little girl underwent the first open heart surgery in Aotearoa New Zealand and made medical history. The patient was 10-year-old Helen Harris (née Arnold) from Christchurch and the surgeon was Brian Barratt-Boyes.
LOVE: ‘I was Sir Brian Barratt-Boyes’ “golden girl,” the first to go on the heart-lung machine in 1958… When I meet mums with babies who have heart problems, I see hope in their eyes as I’m still here.’ In her seventies, Helen has undergone five pokanga (procedures) in her life, including four pacemakers, which help keep her heart beating.
SCIENCE: The manawa (heart) can only be stopped for three to four minutes before a lack of hāora (oxygen) causes brain damage. The heart-lung machine allows surgeons to stop the heart for a much longer time, repair it and then start it again as the machine takes over the pumping of the heart and oxygenation of the blood.
The innovative spirit of people like Sir Brian continues today with breakthroughs in cardiac medicine and the establishment of Aotearoa’s first dedicated national heart rangahau (research) centre, Manaaki Mānawa at Auckland University.
Though the exhibition has closed, MOTAT is keeping the story of cardiac surgery innovation alive here on Our Health Journeys.
For more information on Helen’s surgery and the team behind it, explore the cardiac story of Aotearoa New Zealand in Brave Hearts.