Mayo-Gibbon Heart-Lung Machine

A heart-lung machine takes blood from a patient, oxygenates it, and pumps it back into the patient's body. Dr. John H. Gibbon developed the first successful machine of this sort, and demonstrated it at the Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia in 1953. While that project was underway, Dr. John W. Kirklin, a surgeon at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, was assembling a team to develop, produce and test a new and improved machine. The first procedure with that machine was performed in March 1955. This example is a Mayo-Gibbon heart-lung machine, Model 1010B.

Ref: “HEART-LUNG DEVICE SUCCESS IN SURGERY,” New York Times (May 30, 1953), p. 17.

John H. Gibbon, Jr., et. al., “Oxygenating Unit for Extracorporeal Circulation Devices,” U.S. Patent 2,702,035 (Feb. 15, 1955), assigned to the Jefferson Medical College.

Richard C. Daly, et. al., “Fifty Years of Open Heart Surgery at the Mayo Clinic,” Mayo Clinic Proceedings 80 (2005): 636-640.

Irwin Speizer, “This 1950s Heart-Lung Machine Revolutionized Cardiac Surgery,” Smithsonian Magazine (May 24, 2019).

“John W. Kirklin is Dead at 86; Innovator in Cardiac Surgery,” New York Times (April 30, 2004), p. A25.

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