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Dutch physician and physiologist Williem Einthoven develops the first electrocrardiograph machine. Capable of measuring small changes in electrical potential as heart contracts and relaxes. In 1924 Einthoven is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in medicine for his discovery.
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Philip Drinker, assisted by Louis Agassiz Shaw, devises the first modern practical respirator uing an iron box and two vacuum cleaners. Pumps raise and lower the pressure within the respiratory chamber, exerting a pull and push motion on the patients chests.
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Albert S. Hymen, a practitioner cardiologist in New York, invents n artificial pacemaker to resusciate patients whose hearts have stopped. Working with his brother they created a hand-cranked apparatus with a spring motor that turns a magnet to supply an electrical impulse. This never received acceptance from the medical community.
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William J. Kolff successfully treats a dying patient in Holland with an “artificial kidney”, the first kidney dialysis machine. Made of wooden drums, cellophane tubing and laundry tubs and is able to draw the women’s blood, clean it of impurities, and pump it back into her body.
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Kevin Tuohy receives a patent for a plastic contact lens designed to cover only the eye's cornea, a major change from earlier designs. Two years later George Butterfield introduces a lens that is molded to fit the cornea contours rather than lie flat atop it.
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John Charnley applies engineering principles to orthopedics and develops the first artificial hip replacement procedure, or arthroplasty. Charnley's principles are subsequently adopted for other joint replacements, including the knee and shoulder.
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Charles Hufnagel develops an artificial heart valve and performs the first artificial valve implantation surgery in a human patient the following year. The first replacement valve surgeries are performed in 1960. Albert Starr, working with electrical engineer Lowell Edwards, designs a silicone ball inside a cage made of stellite-21, an alloy of cobalt, molybdenum, chromium, and nickel. The Starr-Edwards heart valve is born and is still in use today.
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John H. Gibbon performs the first successful open-heart bypass surgery on 18-year-old Cecelia Bavolek, whose heart and lung functions are supported by a heart-lung machine developed by Gibbon. The device is the culmination of two decades of research and experimentation and heralds a new era in surgery and medicine.
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A team of doctors at Boston’s Peter Bent Brigham Hospital successfully performs the first human kidney transplant. Led by Joseph E. Murray, the physicians remove a healthy kidney from the donor, Ronald Herrick, and implant it in his identical twin brother, Richard, who is dying of renal disease. Since the donor and recipient are perfectly matched, the operation proves that in the absence of the body’s rejection response, which is stimulated by foreign tissue, human organ transplants can succeed.
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Buffalo, New York, electrical engineer Wilson Greatbatch develops the first totally internal pacemaker using two commercial silicon transistors. Surgeon William Chardack implants the device into 10 fatally ill patients. The first lives for 18 months, another for 30 years.
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Francis L’Esperance, of the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, begins working with a ruby laser photo-coagulator to treat diabetic retinopathy, a complication of diabetes and a leading cause of blindness in the United States.
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Computerized axial tomography, popularly known as CAT or CT scan, is introduced as the most important development in medical filming since the X ray some 75 years earlier.
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Graeme Clarke in Australia carries out the first cochlear implant surgery. Advances in integrated circuit technology enable him to design a multiple electrode receiver-stimulator unit about the size of a quarter.
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The first commercial MRI scanner arrives on the medical market.
