Richard Varco, 91; on Team That Did First Open-Heart Surgery

Richard Lynn Varco, a University of Minnesota surgeon who was part of a team of doctors responsible for the world’s first open-heart surgery, died Monday at a hospital near his home in Halfmoon Bay, British Columbia. He was 91.

Varco, a native of Montana, earned three degrees from the University of Minnesota and spent his career there. He retired in 1981.

He had a hand in a number of firsts in medicine. On Sept. 2, 1952, Varco was on the team that performed the world’s first open-heart surgery, repairing a heart murmur in a 5-year-old girl.

He and a friend, Dr. Henry Buchwald, along with two mechanical engineers and a physiologist, created the world’s first implantable drug-infusion pump in the 1960s. A similar device today delivers insulin to diabetics, pain medication to the spinal cord and anti-clotting medicines to the bloodstream.