For most of history, the human heart has been regarded as too delicate to tamper with. But daring and innovative doctors from the twentieth century aided in new advancements that lead to a new heart era with creations like the heart lung machine. Due to John Heysham Gibbon Jr.’s invention of a heart-lung machine, Gibbon was able to perform the first successful intercardiac surgery, also known as open heart surgery. Born in Philadelphia on September 29, 1903, Gibbon was born to John Heysham Gibbon Sr., a surgeon, and Marjorie Gibbon (Shumacker, 1982). Later in his life, he earned his B.A. from Princeton University in 1923, and his M.D. from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia in 1927 (Knight, 2001). Seven years later Gibbon went to work
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It was the original thought of César Julien Jean Legallois that influenced Gibbons invention. Legallois said that if something could inject arterial blood one could survive. The previous discovery of blood transfusions allowed Gibbon to create a machine that pumped real blood. The most important discovery made that really assured the success of the heart lung machine, was the discovery of heparin (Fou, 1997). Heparin removes and prevents clots in blood. Blood with clots cannot circulate properly and can kill a patient. The machine Gibbon created took deoxygenated blood from veins in the body, oxygenated it by a rotating blood-film oxygenator and ejected it back into the body all while taking over respiration as well (Gibbon, 1982). Then, on May 10, 1935, he made his first successful use of the heart-lung machine during an operation on a cat in which the device took over cardiac and respiratory functions. This was the first model created and could not be used on any larger animals because the device was first very small (Gibbon, 1982). After hearing about the success of this machine on cats, IBM reached out to Gibbon and asked him to create a more sophisticated machine which was referred to as Model II (Gibbon, 1982). This model was larger and more fit for the use of a larger
It was the original thought of César Julien Jean Legallois that influenced Gibbons invention. Legallois said that if something could inject arterial blood one could survive. The previous discovery of blood transfusions allowed Gibbon to create a machine that pumped real blood. The most important discovery made that really assured the success of the heart lung machine, was the discovery of heparin (Fou, 1997). Heparin removes and prevents clots in blood. Blood with clots cannot circulate properly and can kill a patient. The machine Gibbon created took deoxygenated blood from veins in the body, oxygenated it by a rotating blood-film oxygenator and ejected it back into the body all while taking over respiration as well (Gibbon, 1982). Then, on May 10, 1935, he made his first successful use of the heart-lung machine during an operation on a cat in which the device took over cardiac and respiratory functions. This was the first model created and could not be used on any larger animals because the device was first very small (Gibbon, 1982). After hearing about the success of this machine on cats, IBM reached out to Gibbon and asked him to create a more sophisticated machine which was referred to as Model II (Gibbon, 1982). This model was larger and more fit for the use of a larger