The use of an internal mammary artery for creating a systemic-to-pulmonary artery shunt.

We report on two patients who had systemic-to-pulmonary artery shunts created by the use of the internal mammary artery (IMA). The first patients was operated on more then 30 years ago (the case has never been published) and the second one move recently. We give a brief summary of the ten cases of the same operation published so far, and emphasize the usefulness of the IMA that stays open despite the initially poor run-off and is capable of supplying increasing amounts of blood to the growing pulmonary arteries.