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WILKES-BARRE — Every person has a story. I learned that a long time ago.
It rang true again just the other day.
Dr. Victor Greco of Drums called to talk about an event that happened in 1953 and still means a lot to him. In fact, it means a lot to millions of people.
Dr. Greco was a member of the surgical team that performed the first successful open-heart surgery.
Take a moment and read that sentence again. Take your time. Read it more than once or twice. It’s that significant.
Greco was on the team headed by Philadelphia surgeon John H. Gibbon Jr. who designed the heart-lung machine.
It was 1953, and Greco, then 25, had a young woman’s life in his hands.
The patient was 18-year-old Cecelia Bavolek of Swoyersville. The surgery was performed at Thomas Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia and Greco operated the heat-lung machine.
Greco wanted to talk about that historic procedure and I wanted to listen. He told me Cecelia was “at death’s door” when she arrived at Jefferson and had only days to live.
Cecelia’s condition was an “intra-sepal defect between the atrium upper chambers of the heart.”
“She was at death’s door,” Greco said. “You only take the sickest of the sick when doing experimental surgery. Her family realized it was the only chance she had.”
Greco said he and all members of the team were a bit nervous on that day — May 6, 1953 — when they made medical history.
Bavolek’s heart was stopped for the 45-minute surgery. The machine, used in place of her heart, circulated and provided oxygen for about 26 minutes.
Greco said, even though the success rate of open-heart surgery was unproven at the time, Cecelia’s family agreed to have the surgery performed.
Greco remembers the day well. He and all members of the surgical team were up early. Fifteen medical students volunteered to donate blood for the procedure.
Cecelia was hooked up to the machine — her blood would go through the machine, which would perform the work of her heart and lungs, allowing the team to operate on her heart.
When the surgery was complete, Cecelia was removed from the heart-lung machine and sent to recovery where Greco stayed with her.
The operation was a success and Cecelia enjoyed another 47 years of life. She died in 2000 at the age of 65.
Her obituary shows she attended Swoyersville schools, was a 1952 graduate of St. Mary’s High School in Wilkes-Barre, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Wharton School of Business. She worked as an administrative assistant and board liaison at Independence Blue Cross in Philadelphia.
An account of the operation ran in The New York Times and other major newspapers. Before the machine, the Times noted, the surgeon had to operate on the beating heart as it went about its business of pumping blood.
Greco said Gibbon and his team were credited with ushering in a new era of cardiopulmonary surgery.
“We were doing something that was never done before,” Greco said.
Cecelia Bavolek was the first person to survive open heart surgery. And a young doctor from the Hazleton area was on the surgical team. Remarkable.
“The last frontier of surgery was broken,” Greco said. “And the patient survived.”
Greco said Dr. Gibbon did not seek publicity, but shared details with a top medical journal which brought a lot of renowned surgeons to Jefferson to meet with him.
Greco said he and Gibbon tried to keep in touch with Cecelia in the years following the surgery, but she and her family were private people, not wanting to discuss the operation.
In 1973, on the 20th anniversary of the surgery, the surgical team members got together and invited Cecelia and her family to join them. She declined, sending her thanks.
Cecelia’s sister, Josephine Bavolek, still lives in Swoyersville. Josephine lived with Cecelia in Philadelphia for many years. A nephew, Bob Bovolick (who spells his last name differently than Cecelia) lives in Kingston. He said his aunt lived an active life following the surgery.
Bob, who had always been told Cecelia had a hole in her heart that needed to be repaired, said Cecelia didn’t talk much about the historic operation.
Call it what you want — groundbreaking, historical, breakthrough — the fact is Cecelia survived and lived 47 years longer than she would have if not for Dr. Gibbon, his heart-lung machine and his team, which included Dr. Victor Greco.
In 45 minutes in that operating room at Jefferson Medical in Philadelphia, Gibbon, Greco and the team opened up the entire field of cardiac surgery.
A past winner of UNICO International’s Marconi Award, Greco said his good friend and surgical teammate, Dr. John McKeown, died recently, leaving Greco the only remaining member of the team.
Despite several offers to work at major facilities, Greco and his wife returned to Hazleton to raise their six children.
And Cecelia Bavolek went on with her life.