"Blalock-Taussig shunt, also known as a BT shunt or Blalock-Thomas-Taussig shunt, is a palliative procedure designed to increase pulmonary arterial blood flow in patients with right ventricular outflow tract obstruction (e.g. tetralogy of Fallot) or during initial staged repair of hypoplastic left heart syndrome. This procedure is usually performed in the first week of life."
"The Blalock-Taussig shunt was the first surgical systemic-artery-to-pulmonary-artery shunt 2. The procedure was named after Alfred Blalock (surgeon to first perform this procedure) and Helen Taussig (paediatric cardiologist, who designed the shunt). Vivien Thomas, who was Blalock's laboratory technician, developed the procedure in laboratory dogs and adapted instruments for the first human surgery from those used on the experimental animals. The procedure was first performed in a 15-month-old girl with tetralogy of Fallot in November 1944 at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland (USA)."
"History and etymology"