Nils Stensen first described tetralogy of Fallot in 1571 (Apitz 2015) and the clinical picture was described anatomically and pathologically by Sir Thomas Bevill Peacock in 1866 (Chopra 2013). The French pathologist Etienne Louis Arthur Fallot, after whom the tetralogy of Fallot was ultimately named, coined the term "tetralogy" in 1888 (Chopra 2013).
The first open heart surgeries with the heart-lung machine have been possible since 1953 (Schmaltz 1998).