science · 10 May 1935 · 90 years ago
In 1935, American surgeon John Gibbon successfully maintained the cardiac and respiratory function of a cat using his invention, a rotating blood-film oxygenator in the first heart-lung machine. Thus, he had demonstrated that life can be maintained by an external pump acting as an artificial heart during an operation. After 18 years of improvements, on 6 May 1953, Gibbon successfully performed the first open-heart operation on an 18-yr-old patient, Cecelia Bavolek, demonstrating that an artificial device can temporarily mimic the functions of the heart. Modern versions allow surgeons today to perform bypass surgery and heart transplants.
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