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About BraveHeartsNZ

The Auckland Medical Museum Trust is seeking donations for its first exhibition – Brave Hearts. We know our sporting heroes inspire young New Zealanders. And we know that international success encourages our youth to achieve. But how many of us know about New Zealand’s history of world-class achievements by dedicated young heart surgeons and their teams? The first simple heart operations in NZ were done in 1942. But it was Sir Douglas Robb’s 1948 series of successful operations on “blue babies” which first captured the imagination of the public. By the 1950s a revolution was about to break on the world’s operating tables. New practices and new technology launched an exciting era for cardiac surgery internationally. The Auckland Medical Museum will display and tell the story of New Zealand’s first heart-lung bypass machine that changed everything. In 1962 Brian Barratt-Boyes, using this machine, applied a masterful technique for replacing a heart valve with a human donor and set the international standard for aortic valve surgery. The machine was first used to close a hole in the heart in 1958. We want to celebrate those brave medical pioneers who rode a new wave of medicine to learn and teach how to repair the damaged hearts of newborn babies, children and adults. And we want everyone to know more about the heart, what can go wrong, what can be done to fix the problem, and what we can do to prevent problems in the first place. The progress in cardiology and all the specialisations involved in heart surgery over the last 60 years is astonishing. We believe New Zealand’s pioneering story must be told.

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