Leonardo's drawing, with the mitral valve at the front of the heart,
provided a 'eureka moment' for Francis Wells
Posted on 09/29/2005 6:49:35 PM PDT by wagglebee
HIS drawings, diagrams and maps have excited and inspired us for half a millennium. Now once more Leonardo da Vinci has proved that he was far ahead of his time — and ours.
A leading heart and lung specialist has been inspired by anatomical discoveries made by Leonardo 500 years ago to change the way he conducts certain operations. Francis Wells, consultant cardiac surgeon at Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, said yesterday that he had had a “eureka moment” as he pored over drawings and notes by the artist in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle.
Mr Wells was studying Leonardo’s intricate observations of all the individual components of the heart — the way the valves open and close, the expansion and contraction of the muscles and the flow of blood in and out. The revelatory moment came as he looked at the artist’s exploration of how the blood flow affects the closure mechanism of the mitral valve, which controls the direction of blood. Leonardo showed an extraordinary understanding of the mechanism of the valve closure and the integrity of the valve structure. Until now, repairs involved narrowing the diameter of the valve, which in turn restricted the flow of blood.
With Leonardo’s understanding of the importance of the opening and closing phases of the valve, Mr Wells has worked out how to restore the valve’s normal and full variability in opening and closing properly.
“That has been a big step forward,” he said. “We hadn’t thought carefully enough about the importance of the opening phase of the valve on normal heart function to allow extremes of exercise. Leonardo worked it out in the 1500s. This has brought about a significant change in the surgical approach to this valve which I hope will influence other surgeons in the world.”
He added: “What Leonardo was saying about the shape of the valve is important. It means we can repair this valve in a better way. The knowledge that he demonstrated 500 years ago has been lying fallow ever since.” Mr Wells has returned the mitral valve towards its normal functional state — not simply a corrected state — in operations on 80 patients so far.
“It’s a complete rethink of the way we do the mitral valve operation,” he said.
Each patient has reported a dramatic improvement and an increase in their exercise tolerance, he said. “The mitral repair does enhance people’s quality of life to that degree. It allows a dramatic improvement in clinical status,” he said.
Operations on the mitral valve are particularly complex. The valve, one of four within the heart, is like a door that opens and closes. In closing, the valve stops blood going the wrong way. In opening, it allows the heart to fill with blood.
The valve has two openings, flaps of tissue that arise from a circular orifice in the heart. The flaps fold in and out like butterfly wings.
If it stops functioning properly, the limited amount of blood flowing through the heart is also limited in reaching the rest of the body. The flaps then become like swing doors that open both ways and the valve starts to leak, leaving the heart unable to push itself to the normal extremes.
The patient quickly becomes breathless and drained of energy with the slightest exertion. Until now, surgeons have narrowed the diameter of the valve by removing a square portion of one of the flaps. Now, by closing the gaps on each side of the prolapsing flap and cutting out the excess tissue in a V-shape, he can make the valve competent again.
He said: “Before, people have tended to do what they were taught. They didn’t look at the normal function of the valve. Now patients have ended up with a valve that works like the one God gave them.”
Mr Wells and Leonardo feature in The Secret Of Drawing, which begins on BBC Two on October 8.
RENAISSANCE MAN
- Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), painter, draftsman, sculptor, architect and engineer
- Anticipated the parachute, helicopter, armoured car, paddle boats, contact lenses, submarine
- The Church forbade post-mortem dissection but he dissected more than 30 bodies
- Pioneered the High Renaissance style of balance, serenity, and technical accomplishment nearly a generation before Michelangelo and Raphael
Leonardo's drawing, with the mitral valve at the front of the heart,
provided a 'eureka moment' for Francis Wells
Tesla was definitely one of the most brilliant, and usually the most forgotten also. what is this tesla cult thing?
Marconi is one of my personal favorite inventors. Without him, how would El Rushbo conduct his show? Morse code?
My personal vote goes to Newton. Without question. Nobody else even comes close.
http://www.metaweb.com/wiki/wiki.phtml?title=Isaac_Newton_(Alan_Sinder)
Liebniz would take exception to that.
Every so often, a truly great mind comes along to bring an illumination. Da Vinci was one of those.
I agree...Newton. The man gave us specific instructions, along with a math he invented to compute the answers, on how bodies in the universe work.
It took Sputnik to prove him right.
John Adams was the genius behind the Massachussetts constitution upon which the US Constitution was based. Pretty good intellect, I would say!
Leibniz, Boole, Babbage, von Neumann...so many.
I believe that Newton solved a previously unsolvable problem using antidifferential equations, thereby developing differential calculus. The Greeks actully started the whole mess by trying to solve the unsolvable, ruining many budding mathemeticians.
My money is on James Madison.
A living heart would be pretty hard to study, actually, it'd be shaking and squirting blood all over, obscuring the examination. And cutting a living heart enough to get a good view of the valve in action would result in abnormal or non-functional operation.
Da Vinci could have cut the valve area out of a fresh human or animal heart, and then poured clear liquids through it from different directions to study how it operated.
Reminds me a program I saw recently on the History Channel about Galen the physician. He was performing cataract surgeries in ancient Rome. But the technology was completely lost in Medieval Europe.
the quote says "since Newton" so one assumes he's place Newton, then Maxwell.
I'd give Da Vinci the edge over Newton. There's no doubt that Newton was an absolute genius at mathematics, and this gave him some fundamental insights into the mathematical relationships of physics, but -- and I in no way mean this in disrespect -- mathematical geniuses are a dime a dozen, even if most of them never achieve any public recognition.
Da Vinci, however, was an innovater and world-class master of so *many* diverse fields, each one of them a career in themselves, each one of which would have insured his lasting fame if that one field was the only one in which he had made his accomplishments.
Painting, sculpting, architecture, anatomy, engineering, mechanics, optics, hydraulics, drafting, warfare, mathematics... He even made discoveries in meteorology, geology, and paleontology.
Newton was was one of the all-time greats in mathematics. Da vinci was one of the all-time greats in *everything* he put his mind to, including pursuits which are generally considered different "kinds" of genius -- how often do we expect brilliant artists to be scientific geniuses as well, or vice versa?
Still, the case could be made that Newton achieved more in mathematics than Da Vinci did in any one of his many fields of study, but the kind of versatile genius which can master everything it contemplates gets my vote over the kind which excels, no matter how superbly, in a narrower discipline.
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That's true.
Might you include Aristotle as the greatest polymath?
Would you consider Thomas Acquinas as the greatest philosopher/theologian?
Art ping.
This is almost an art/science ping, but I found it fascinating.
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