When he was 10 years old Dr. Mansur Taufic knew he wanted to be a surgeon.

At 37 he made surgical history.

Taufic assisted in the the first successful open heart operation Sept. 2, 1952 at the University of Minnesota. The patient was a 5-year-old girl who grew up to be a carpenter and raise a family.

Now, at 87, Taufic is being honored for his work at the University of Minnesota and for his medical career in Austin. On June 11, the University of Minnesota will name him Surgical Alumnus of the Year at the annual meeting of the Minnesota Surgical Residents Society in Minneapolis.

"In order to receive this honor, I had to do a lot of work," Taufic said.

Taufic graduated from the University of Brazil Medical School in 1938 and practiced medicine for 12 years before visiting the University of Minnesota and helping Dr. F. John Lewis research heart surgery at the University of Minnesota. Taufic ended up staying in Minnesota and received his master of science in surgery degree at the University of Minnesota in 1955. Taufic moved to Austin in 1958 with his wife, Majorie, and was an independent surgeon for 30 years until he retired in 1988.

At the meeting June 11, Taufic will present his 1955 master's thesis about the interventrical septal heart defects in dogs.

He and Lewis researched dogs' hearts because they are simliar to human hearts. Before the historic 1952 operation, Taufic and other researchers used dogs to see if lowering the body temperature during open heart surgery would damage the brain. After successful operations on the dogs, they used hypothermia in 1952 to repair a interatrial septal heart defect in the 5-year-old girl.

At the time, most doctors tried to use heart and lung machines for open heart surgery, without success.Today most surgeons in the United States use more advanced heart and lung machines for open heart surgery, which allows the heart to be open for about an hour. By using hypothermia,the heart only can be opened for a maximum of 15 minutes before the brain starts to lose oxygen. During the 1952 operation, the heart was open for five minutes.

But a benefit to using hypothermia is that no blood transfusion is needed. And more is being done to improve the method. In Siberia, surgeons were able to keep the heart open for up to 89 minutes in 3,000 patients, Taufic wrote last fall in the University of Minnesota's department of surgery newsletter.

"Hypothermia is going to come back," Taufic said of the open heart surgery method. "It has to."

Taufic's award also coincides with the 50th anniversary of the 1952 open heart surgery and the June 11 ceremony will recognize this anniversary, said Dr. Mary Knatterud, assistant professor in the department of surgery at the University of Minnesota.

"The award, this year, is newsworthy," Knatterud said.

Taufic's mentor, Dr. Lewis, who headed the 1952 surgery, received the Surgical Alumnus of the Year award in 1987. Lewis died in 1993,but his wife and daugther will attend the ceremony on June 11.

Taufic's friend Virginia Larsen, of Austin, will attend the ceremony with Taufic. She has helped Taufic prepare for the ceremony by typing up and editing his speech. She said Taufic is "delighted and honored" to receive the award.

"He really worked with the pioneers in open heart surgery," Larsen said. "As he says, he was in the right place at the right time."

In his retirement Taufic plays golf and practices the five languages he has learned throughout the years: Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, English and French.

"I love foreign languages," Taufic said.

Taufic said he is proud of his role in the first successful open heart surgery because of the work he put into it. Lewis credited Taufic with much of the research prior to the1952 operation, Knatterud said.

Even at 10 years old,Taufic said he realized the importance of surgeons and chose the profession for specific reasons.

"I always thought that the surgeon was the one who offers the most wonderful services to humanity -- to cure, to repair, to save," Taufic said.

Cari Quam can be reached at 434-2235 or by e-mail at cari.quam@austindailyherald.com