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Arch Surg. 2000;135:1232.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

CONTRARY to traditional thought, serendipity may play a more important role in clinical and scientific discovery than lengthy investigative research. Similarly, our profession turns out to be fickle and unpredictable in its acceptance of new ideas. Such was my accidental experience with a modality that has salvaged a number of potentially disastrous situations.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, open heart surgery was in its dramatic and hazardous infancy, and the accepted approach to a stenosed mitral valve was by "blind" fracture with a finger introduced through the atrial appendage. It was also true that cardiac catheterization was reserved for resolving complex undiagnosed conditions. Thus, when I was referred a patient with symptoms and a murmur that were classic for mitral stenosis, there was no hesitation about scheduling her for closed valvotomy through the left chest. When I explored the left atrium with my finger, I was surprised and . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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