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Heart-lung machine 50th anniversary marked by Joseph Sistino Program Director and Assistant Professor, Cardiovascular Perfusion May 6 marks the 50th anniversary of the first successful use of a heart-lung machine to support a patient during the repair of a heart defect. On the same date in 1953, John H. Gibbon Jr., M.D., pioneered modern open-heart surgery by using a machine of his own design to oxygenate the blood of an 18-year-old girl while he closed a hole in her heart. For 27 minutes during the operation, her heart and lung functions were completely maintained by the machine. She fully recovered and is alive and well today. To celebrate this once revolutionary and still widely used machine, a demonstration of the operation of the heart-lung machine is scheduled from noon until 2 p.m. in the lobby of the Children’s Hospital. Students, staff and the public are welcome. Gibbon, with his wife Mary, worked hard to achieve success in their laboratory in Massachusetts. Gibbon overcame discouragement from his peers and mentors and obtained crucial financial and engineering support from IBM board chairman, Thomas Watson.  A discouraged Gibbon later abandoned open-heart surgery as a means of repairing human heart lesions after five subsequent surgical failures. However, many others furthered the progress within the field and continued Gibbon’s efforts. As a result, nearly 800,000 people around the world undergo heart surgery a year while supported by the modern version of the heart-lung machine. Now commonly performed in adults and children, open-heart surgery repairs congenital defects, repairs and replaces heart valves, restores the heart’s circulatory system with the coronary bypass operation, and facilitates replacement in heart transplantation. Operations once rarely successful are routinely performed today with much greater success due to the technological progress in the development of the heart-lung machine. The health care professionals who operate heart-lung machines under the direction of a cardiac surgeon are known as perfusionists. James Dearing established MUSC’s cardiovascular perfusion school more than 25 years ago. As one of 20 perfusion school in the United States, the Cardiovascular Perfusion Program in the College of Health Professions is proud to sponsor this event. “Without the invention of the heart and lung machine, heart surgery couldn't have developed into what it is today. Open-heart surgery can't take place without a device to take on the functions of the heart for the duration of a procedure; it really opened the door to the era of modern cardiovascular surgery.” —Dr. Fred Crawford Jr. Chairman, Department of Surgery     Catalyst Online is published weekly, updated as needed and improved from time to time by the MUSC Office of Public Relations for the faculty, employees and students of the Medical University of South Carolina. Catalyst Online editor, Kim Draughn, can be reached at 792-4107 or by email, catalyst@musc.edu. Editorial copy can be submitted to Catalyst Online and to The Catalyst in print by fax, 792-6723, or by email to petersnd@musc.edu or catalyst@musc.edu. To place an ad in The Catalyst hardcopy, call Community Press at 849-1778.