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GIBBON, JOHN H., JR. 1903-1973

DEVELOPER OF THE FIRST PRACTICAL HEART-LUNG MACHINE

Stimulus to Discovery

One day in 1930, while serving as a Harvard research fellow in surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital, Gibbon watched a patient undergoing heart-lung surgery suffocate on his own blood. To help such patients, he and his wife experimented with several different types of machines, until in 1935 they successfully used a heart-lung device on a dog, maintaining its life for thirty-nine minutes. But they had trouble developing an artificial lung big enough for humans.

Research Support and Success

In the late 1940s Gibbon became associated with the IBM Corporation, which provided engineers at the company's expense to aid him in the development of his oxygenator. Finally, in May 1953, Gibbon and F. F. Albritten, Jr., used the heart-lung machine during surgery to close a large opening in the heart wall of an eighteen-year-old girl, maintaining all of the patient's heart and lung functions on the machine for twenty-six minutes. The he art-lung machine paved the way for modern open-heart surgery, including procedures for the correction of congenital heart defects in infants, the repair of heart valves, coronary-bypass surgery, and heart transplants.

Contemporary Improvements

Researchers have greatly improved upon Gibbon's original design. In the 1990s heart-lung machines allow surgeons as much time as they need to operate without danger to the patient.