John Gibbon developed the first successful heart-lung machine used in open-heart surgery.
Gibbon’s machine temporarily performed the work of the heart and lungs by circulating and oxygenating blood outside the body. On 6 May 1953, surgeon Mary Gibbon used the machine during the first successful open-heart operation with cardiopulmonary bypass.
The patient was an 18-year-old woman with an atrial septal defect. The operation demonstrated that surgeons could stop the heart while maintaining circulation and oxygen delivery, making repairs inside the heart possible.
The machine was the result of decades of work, including experiments beginning after Gibbon witnessed a patient die from a pulmonary embolism. Gibbon is sometimes confused with later heart surgeons such as Christiaan Barnard, who performed the first human heart transplant in 1967.