The overwhelming success of cardiac surgery is closely related to the development and use of extracorporeal perfusion. After the first successful treatment of a stab wound to the heart in 1896 by Ludwig Rehn in Frankfurt, only a limited number of cardiac and vascular diseases could be treated without extracorporeal perfusion during the next 50 years, e.g. closure of a patent ductus (Robert E. Gross), coarctation of the aorta (Clarence Crafoord), the Blalock-Taussig shunt, mechanical dilation of the pulmonary valve (Russell C. Brock) and the mitral valve (Charles P. Bailey/Dwight E. Harken).

However, it soon became apparent that the success and applicability of these procedures for cardiac diseases were limited. The same situation also proved true for the next attempt to improve operative results using deep hypothermia.