CATHOLIC HEALTH PARTNERS
St. Elizabeth Health Center of Youngstown, Ohio, recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of the region's first open-heart surgery by bringing together the family of a St. Elizabeth physician who helped perform the operation and the heart patient he saved.
At the gathering, family members of the late Dr. Edmund Massullo met 52-year-old Cora "Betty" Rushton, who was 2 years old when Massullo and his partner Dr. Angelo Riberi performed a four-plus-hour operation to close a large hole in her heart. The June 11, 1962, surgery was the first open-heart procedure in the Mahoning Valley, the region surrounding Youngstown.
Rushton and her mother, also named Cora, participated in the June 11 anniversary gathering along with other Rushton family members. The senior Rushton recalled how other doctors at the time would not operate on her daughter, because the child was small for her age. After the initial operation, the family learned that the child had Down syndrome — she was not expected to live beyond age 8. The younger Cora has since had multiple follow-up heart procedures at St. Elizabeth and she is healthy and active.
| As part of the recent celebration, the Massullo family dedicated a new family waiting area in their patriarch's memory. It is in the cardiovascular intensive care unit.
According to information published in the, about 50 percent of people with Down syndrome have heart defects. Theorists say that the life spans of people with Down syndrome are increasing steadily in part because of improvements in treating such defects. Statistics cited in the report in the International Review of Research in Developmental Disabilities indicate that life expectancy was below 15 years for people with Down syndrome in 1950; today, it is nearly 60 years. | | 
Here, Massullo's daughter, Anne Massullo Sabella, at left, meets Cora "Betty" Rushton, at right, for the first time at the dedication ceremony, as the elder Cora Rushton looks on. |
Copyright © 2012 by the Catholic Health Association of the United States
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