B3,+Cassidy+Sequin,+John+Heysham+Gibbon

**John Heysham Gibbon** ==== Synopsis: John Heysham Gibbon was an inventor who created the heart-lung bypass machine. He was a physician ahead of his time who took the first steps into new levels of surgery. His goal was to create a machine to bypass the heart long enough to be operated on in surgery. He succeeded by going about many experiments on animals, then on humans. He received many awards for his efforts, and became president of many associations. ====

====John Heysham Gibbon was an inventor/physician who was best known for his invention of the heart-lung bypass machine. This machine was the first that successfully kept a human alive during an entire open-heart surgery. In 1931, Gibbon was working on a patient who had died during a surgery. This encouraged him to put thought into a machine that will enable a person’s heart to pump out less blood during surgery so that they don’t bleed out. His fellow physicians discouraged him from conducting experiments; they thought he’d be wasting his time. So, he worked on the ideas for this machine independently. In 1935, he conducted the surgery on a cat with a prototype machine, &it was a success. In 1946 “Engineer Thomas Watson provided the financial and technical support for Gibbon to further develop his heart-lung machine”. The machine was designed to “ minimized hemolysis and prevented air bubbles from entering the circulation. ” These advanced led him to complete another experiment which kept 12 dogs alive for an hour during heart operations. ====

==== Clarence Dennis made a modified version of the machine, but it had some disadvantages like being hard to clean, therefore spreading diseases transmitted by blood. Viking Olov Bjork created the final model & it was used successfully on a human in 1953. This was the next & final step in the process. The human survived open heart surgery without too many troubles; the heart-lung machine supporting it fully. “Oxygen was passed over the rotating discs in the machine and provided sufficient oxygenation fo r an adult human.” This enabled the machine to keep the heart beating, yet tranquil enough to operate on. In 1960, it was considered an adequate medical invention to use during certain surgeries. ====  Gibbon was born a fourth generation physician in 1903 in Philadelphia, PA. He graduated from Princeton University, then later on from Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia. He had degrees from 4 other colleges, & later on became all sorts of professors & directors in departments of surgery. After his success in created the heart-lung machine, he received many awards. He turned out to be a very honorable figure in the world of surgeons & of pioneer advances in medical machines.

by Cassidy Sequin