He never left Italy, and paid for children's travel and hosted them in his house near the Clinic;[7] sometimes to save money he used to season salad with hard-boiled eggs (a low price source of proteins).
The first child to be operated by Rastelli was a four-year-old boy named Paolo Ravesi, who was affected by atrioventricular canal (partial type) and who had undergone surgery in Italy without success.
In 1968 Rastelli operated on his second patient, the son of one of his colleagues in Parma, Pietro Maniscalco; since birth he had suffered from coarctation of the aorta, a condition thought to be inoperable in Italy.
On 19 December 1969, Paolo Frugoni, a six-year-old boy with TGV, came to Mayo Clinic in search of medical assistance.
[10] Nowadays the name of Giancarlo Rastelli is still remembered and used very much in the field of cardiac surgery due to the impact of his important discoveries.
The atrioventricular canal represents 3-5% of heart diseases which originates from an embryological ventricular septal defect of the cardiac cavity.
[12] That lesion affects the crux cardis, a structure formed by the crossing of the atrial and ventricular septa and by the atrioventricular valves: tricuspid and mitral.
[13] In patients who are affected by the atrioventricular canal, which is caused by the non-fusion of the endocardial cushions, there is a communication between the right and left sides of the heart at the level of the atria and ventricles.
[12] In 1966, the magazine "Mayo Clinic Proceedings" has published the classification of the different forms: complete and incomplete, that the atrioventricular canal assumes.
In the complete form there is the distinction of three subtypes of heart diseases: A,B or C according to the characteristics of the common anterior germ layer of the Atrioventricular canal.
It is characterized by a lack of formation of the two main vessels that normally bring blood from the heart to the lungs and to the rest of the body.
Due to embryological defects, in patients affected, a unique vessel carries the blood either to the lungs either to the other organs and tissues.
The innovation of Rastelli's group consisted in improving an already pre-existent surgical technique by introducing extracardiac conduct from the right ventricle to the pulmonary artery.