History
Dr. Clarence Dennis led the team that conducted the first known operation involving open cardiotomy with temporary mechanical takeover of both heart and lung functions on April 5, 1951 at the University of Minnesota Hospital. The patient did not survive due to an unexpected complex congenital heart defect. This followed four years of laboratory experimentation with dogs with a unit called the Iron Heart. A team of scientists at Birmingham University (including Eric Charles, a Chemical Engineer) were among the pioneers of this technology. Another member of the team was Dr. Russell M. Nelson, who performed the first open heart surgery in Utah.
The first successful mechanical support of left ventricular function was performed in July 3, 1952 by Forest Dewey Dodrill using a machine, the Dodrill-GMR co-developed with General Motors. The machine was later used to support right ventricular function.
The first successful open heart procedure on a human utilizing the heart lung machine was performed by John Gibbon on May 6, 1953 at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. He repaired an atrial septal defect in an 18-year-old woman.
The oxygenator was first conceptualized in the 17th century by Robert Hooke and developed into practical extracorporeal oxygenators by French and German experimental physiologists in the 19th century. Bubble oxygenators have no intervening barrier between blood and oxygen, these are called 'direct contact' oxygenators. Membrane oxygenators introduce a gas-permeable membrane between blood and oxygen that decreases the blood trauma of direct-contact oxygenators. Much work since the 1960s focused on overcoming the gas exchange handicap of the membrane barrier, leading to the development of high-performance microporous hollow-fibre oxygenators that eventually replaced direct-contact oxygenators in cardiac theatres.
Read more about this topic: Cardiopulmonary Bypass
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—Ben C. Bradlee (b. 1921)
“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It may be well to remember that the highest level of moral aspiration recorded in history was reached by a few ancient Jews—Micah, Isaiah, and the rest—who took no count whatever of what might not happen to them after death. It is not obvious to me why the same point should not by and by be reached by the Gentiles.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)