Let’s have a look on what history has to say about this breakthrough…

John Heysham Gibbon is considered the inventor of the heart-lung or pump oxygenator. The first heart-lung machine was built by him in 1937, who also performed the first human open heart operation. The death of a young patient in 1931, first stirred Dr. John Heysham Gibbon’s imagination about developing an artificial device for bypassing the heart and lungs which ill allow for more effective heart surgery. He was discouraged by all with whom he mentioned the subject, but he continued his experiments and invention independently. In 1935, he successfully used a prototype cardiopulmonary bypass machine to keep a cat alive for 26 minutes.

Later in 1946, John Gibbon joined forces with Thomas Watson. Watson, an engineer and the chairman of IBM (International Business Machines), provided the financial and technical support to Gibbon for further development of his bypass machine, and hence, came up with an improved machine that “minimized haemolysis and prevented air bubbles from entering the circulation.” The device was only tested on dogs and had a 10% mortality rate.

Further improvements kept happening with contributions of the inventors like Clarence Dennis and Viking Olov Bjork. The heart lung bypass machine was first used on a human in 1953, and in 1960, it was considered safe to use the cardiopulmonary bypass machine along with hypothermia to perform coronary artery bypass surgery.