The heart years begin: Lutheran's run of firsts, 1961–1970

1961 — 1970

Dialysis, the coronary unit, the bypass: The clinical-firsts record of Fort Wayne medicine is concentrated in one hospital and one decade. Lutheran Hospital — whose institutional history is the Hospitals record's, cross-referenced here — assembled, between 1961 and 1970, the sequence of firsts on which its heart program still rests, as the network's own timeline states them, each at its claimed scope. In 1961 Lutheran established the first renal dialysis unit in Indiana. In 1967 it opened the community's first coronary care unit. In 1970 its physicians performed the community's first coronary bypass surgery and conducted the first coronary angiogram in the area — the catheter study on which the cath-lab era rests — and the network timeline places the first total cemented hip replacement in northeastern Indiana in the same turn of years (1970–71). The bypass has a name on it: Dr. August Tomusk, a founding member of the surgical practice that became Indiana/Ohio Heart, performed the first coronary artery bypass in northern Indiana in 1970, in the practice's own account, and the achievement "established the heart surgery program at Lutheran Hospital." Coronary bypass is open-heart surgery, and no separate or earlier Fort Wayne open-heart first is asserted in any source reached; the 1970 bypass stands as the city's documented open-heart beginning, at the northern-Indiana scope its sources claim. A second open-heart program followed a decade later at St. Joseph Hospital, whose development from 1980 was the first Fort Wayne assignment of a young cardiothoracic surgeon named Michael Schatzlein — the surgeon of the next-but-one entry.

Sources:

1. Lutheran Hospital timeline (hospitalsdata.com, from the hospital's own history) — the 1961 first renal dialysis unit in Indiana; the 1967 community's first coronary care unit; the 1970 community's first coronary bypass surgery and first coronary angiogram in the area; the first total cemented hip replacement in northeastern Indiana placed in the same sequence (1970–71).
2. AroundFortWayne (6 March 2011), Lutheran Medical Group release on Indiana/Ohio Heart — founding member August Tomusk, MD, performed the first coronary artery bypass in northern Indiana in 1970, establishing the heart surgery program at Lutheran Hospital.
3. AroundFortWayne (10 May 2010) — Michael Schatzlein arrived in Fort Wayne in 1980, his first assignment to develop an open heart surgery program at St. Joseph Hospital.
4. Hospitals section of this history — Lutheran Hospital's institutional history, cross-referenced in one line.