The Eye in the Ear

Anesthetics are riskier than most people realize. One of the dangers is from cerebral anoxia--damage to the brain because of lack of oxygen in the blood, which may kill, paralyze or even turn the patient into a mental defective. Thus far, surgeons have had to rely on such none-too-certain tactics as watching the patient's color, respiration and pulse, or using slow chemical tests.

About ten years ago, Drs. Roy D. McClure and Frank W. Hartman of Detroit's Ford Hospital began experimenting with a photoelectric cell technique first developed in Germany. Later they were joined by Physiologist Vivian Gould Behrmann. Together the experimenters worked out an instrument which gives an almost instantaneous record of the amount of oxygen in the blood.

The device is primarily a photoelectric eye which is attached to the rim of the patient's ear; it reacts to the color of the blood in the ear: bright red when there is enough oxygen, darker as the oxygen diminishes. A year ago Charles F. ("Boss Ket") Kettering,* former head of the General Motors Research Laboratories, joined the team to iron out some technical bugs.

By last week the gadget, called the oxyhemograph, had been used on 300 patients; 110 were heart cases, including 30 "blue babies." Two of the patients owe their lives to the oxyhemograph. One blue baby was saved by quick administration of oxygen when the chart showed a sudden dangerous lowering of blood oxygen. The other patient was having an operation on his knee when he swallowed his tongue and started to choke. The chart gave warning in time. The machine has proved especially useful in long operations and in all operations on the heart. It can tell the surgeon, even before he sews up the incision, whether an operation on the heart of a blue baby is a success or a failure.

* Better known for such automotive research as the self-starter, high-test gasoline, etc. He also pioneered with artificial fever machines and research in chlorophyll. He is a co-director of Manhattan's famed Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research (TIME, June 27).

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