Heart-Lung Machine

A machine does the job of the heart and lungs

To operate on the inner structures of the heart, surgeon John Gibbon Jr. was convinced that he needed a machine to take over pumping and oxygenating the blood while the heart was stopped and free of blood. After working for 12 years to develop such a machine, he used it in 1953 to successfully repair a heart defect in an 18-year-old girl. Researchers immediately began experimenting with improvements to the machine and techniques for cardiac surgery. The era of open-heart surgery had begun.

A 1960s heart-lung machine is readied for surgery.

"It is only necessary to ... withdraw blood from a vein, introduce oxygen and allow carbon dioxide to escape, and then inject the blood into a peripheral artery. It would permit, of course, operations within the heart under direct vision."
John Gibbon Jr., 1949