Best Cardiac

Walton Lillehei was an American cardiac surgeon who helped make open-heart operations for congenital defects possible. At the University of Minnesota in 1954, he used controlled cross-circulation, temporarily connecting a patient to a healthy donor whose heart and lungs supported both circulations d...

John Kirklin was an American cardiac surgeon who helped establish reliable open-heart surgery using mechanical cardiopulmonary bypass. At the Mayo Clinic in 1955, he led a planned series of operations using a refined heart-lung machine derived from John Gibbon's design. Kirklin later worked at the U...

Andreas Gruntzig was a German-born physician who worked in Switzerland and helped found modern interventional cardiology. In Zurich in 1977, he performed the first successful percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty on a conscious patient, using a balloon catheter to widen a narrowed coronary...

Aldo Castaneda was a Guatemalan-born cardiac surgeon known for advancing operations for congenital heart disease in infants and children. At Boston Children's Hospital, he promoted primary repair of complex defects during the neonatal period instead of relying exclusively on staged palliative operat...

Francis Fontan was a French cardiac surgeon who developed an operation for patients born with a single effective pumping ventricle. First performed for tricuspid atresia and reported in 1971, the Fontan procedure directs systemic venous blood toward the pulmonary arteries without passage through a f...

Albert Starr is an American cardiac surgeon who worked with engineer Lowell Edwards to develop the Starr-Edwards prosthetic heart valve. In 1960, Starr implanted their ball-and-cage valve successfully in the mitral position, helping make surgical valve replacement a practical treatment for severe va...

Brian Barratt-Boyes (1924-2006) was a New Zealand cardiac surgeon who helped establish open-heart surgery at Green Lane Hospital in Auckland. He performed early valve replacements using human aortic homografts and developed techniques employing profound hypothermia and circulatory arrest for repairi...

Åke Senning (1915-2000) was a Swedish cardiac surgeon whose work addressed both abnormal heart rhythms and congenital heart disease. In 1958, working with physician Rune Elmqvist, he implanted the first cardiac pacemaker placed in a human patient, although the initial devices functioned only briefly...

Donald Ross (1922-2014) was a South African-born British cardiac surgeon known for innovations in heart-valve surgery. In 1967 he introduced the Ross procedure, in which a patient's pulmonary valve replaces the diseased aortic valve and a donor valve is placed in the pulmonary position. Because the...

F. Mason Sones Jr. (1918-1985) was an American physician and cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic who established selective coronary angiography. In 1958, contrast material was inadvertently injected directly into a coronary artery during catheterization; after observing that the patient survived, S...

Clarence Crafoord (1899-1984) was a Swedish surgeon who contributed to the emergence of cardiac and thoracic surgery. In 1944, at Sabbatsberg Hospital in Stockholm, he performed a successful operation for coarctation of the aorta by removing the narrowed segment and reconnecting the vessel. The proc...

Michel Mirowski (1924-1990) was a Polish-born physician who helped develop the implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, a device designed to detect and terminate life-threatening ventricular arrhythmias. Working with Morton Mower and other collaborators, he pursued the concept despite substantial ear...

Richard Lower was an American cardiac surgeon who worked with Norman Shumway at Stanford University on the experimental foundations of heart transplantation. Their research refined techniques for removing, preserving, and transplanting the heart, helping make clinical transplantation technically pos...

The Zoll AED Plus is a portable automated external defibrillator designed for immediate use during cardiac emergencies. It analyzes heart rhythms and delivers an electrical shock to restore normal rhythm when needed. This device is commonly found in public locations like airports and schools as well...

The Harvey Cardiology Patient Simulator provides a clinically relevant environment for medical students and trainees to practice cardiovascular assessment skills. Developed by the University of Miami, this simulation utilizes authentic heart sounds, pulse dynamics, and clinical presentations to trai...

Dwight Harken was an American cardiac surgeon known for advances made during and after the Second World War. While treating wounded soldiers, he developed methods for removing bullets and shrapnel from the heart and major blood vessels without causing fatal injury, demonstrating that direct cardiac...

Vivien Thomas was an African American surgical technician and researcher who made foundational contributions to cardiac surgery alongside Alfred Blalock at Vanderbilt University and Johns Hopkins. Despite lacking a medical degree and facing racial discrimination that limited his official role and pa...

Claude Beck was an American cardiac surgeon associated with Case Western Reserve University and University Hospitals in Cleveland. In 1947, he performed the first successful defibrillation of a human heart during surgery, using electrical shocks to restore an effective rhythm after ventricular fibri...

Russell Brock, later Baron Brock of Wimbledon, was a British surgeon who contributed to the development of modern cardiac surgery. In the late 1940s, he advanced operations for pulmonary valve narrowing and mitral stenosis, including procedures performed on the beating heart before routine cardiopul...

Alfred Blalock was an American surgeon whose work significantly advanced the fields of surgical shock treatment and cardiac surgery. While working at Vanderbilt University and later Johns Hopkins, he proved that fluid replacement was critical for treating traumatic shock, a finding that saved many l...

Charles Dubost was a French cardiac and vascular surgeon known for major contributions to aortic surgery. In Paris in 1951, he performed the first successful resection of an abdominal aortic aneurysm followed by graft replacement, using a preserved arterial homograft. The operation demonstrated that...

Paul Zoll was an American cardiologist whose research established important clinical uses for electrical stimulation of the heart. In 1952, he reported successful external cardiac pacing in patients with heart block and cardiac standstill, using electrodes placed on the chest. He subsequently contri...

Wilson Greatbatch was an American engineer renowned for his invention of the first implantable electronic medical device. His 1960 pacemaker dramatically advanced cardiac care by enabling continuous, long-term pacing for individuals with heart rhythm disorders. This innovation significantly impacted...

Charles P. Bailey was an American cardiac surgeon associated with the early surgical treatment of mitral valve disease. In 1948 he performed a successful closed mitral commissurotomy, an operation that separates fused portions of the mitral valve without using open-heart circulation. His work helped...

The KardiaMobile 6L is a portable electrocardiogram (EKG) device that records heart activity. It provides six-lead EKG data, allowing for detection of atrial fibrillation and other arrhythmias. This FDA-cleared device offers convenient personal cardiac monitoring for individuals seeking to proactive...

Adrian Kantrowitz was an American cardiac surgeon whose work included heart transplantation and mechanical assistance for failing circulation. In December 1967, his team performed the first human heart transplant in the United States, although the infant recipient survived only briefly. Kantrowitz a...

James Hardy was an American surgeon associated with the University of Mississippi Medical Center and a pioneer of thoracic transplantation. In 1963, his team performed the first human lung transplant; the recipient survived for eighteen days. In 1964, Hardy also transplanted a chimpanzee heart into...

Henry Swan was an American cardiac surgeon at the University of Colorado who investigated the use of hypothermia during heart operations. In 1953, he used controlled cooling to reduce the body's oxygen requirements, allowing circulation to be interrupted briefly while surgeons operated inside the he...

Forest Dewey Dodrill was an American cardiac surgeon known for early work with mechanical support during heart operations. In 1952, working with engineers from General Motors, he used the Dodrill-GMR mechanical heart pump during surgery on a human patient. The device temporarily supported circulatio...