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Minimally Invasive Surgery
Dr. Thomas J. Fogarty came up with the idea for the balloon embolectomy catheter for removing blood clots, and used it on a patient six weeks later. It was the first minimally invasive surgery technique. -
Liver Transplant
The first human liver transplant was performed by Dr. Thomas E. Starzl. The patient, a 3-year-old child, rapidly bled to death. -
Artificial Heart
Paul Winchell, the ventriloquist and inventor, patented the first artificial heart, developed in collaboration with Dr. Henry J. Heimlich, later famous for the Heimlich maneuver. -
Portable Defibrillator
Dr. Frank Pantridge installed the first portable defibrillator in an ambulance in Belfast, Northern Ireland. It weighed 150 pounds and was powered by car batteries. -
Commercial Ultrasound
Walter Erich Krause of the Siemens Corporation filed a patent for the first practical commercial ultrasound machine. According to the patent, his machine could be "used for practical ultra-sonic-optical examination to achieve a lifelike reproduction of the body part under examination." -
Heart Transplant
Dr. Christiaan Barnard, a South African, performed the first human heart transplant. The patient, a 53-year-old man, died 18 days later. -
CT Scanner
The first commercial CT scanner, developed by Dr. Godfrey Hounsfield, was used on a patient in London. Dr. Hounsfield shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his invention. -
Insulin Pump
An inventor and entrepreneur, Dean L. Kamen, patented the first insulin pump. He became perhaps even better known for a later invention, the Segway transporter. -
M.R.I.
Dr. Raymond V. Damadian announced that he had patented a technique using nuclear magnetic resonance to distinguish between normal and cancerous tissue. In 2003, two other researchers won a Nobel Prize for further discoveries. -
Synthetic Blood
The first synthetic blood, Fluosol-DA, was approved for human use. It was withdrawn from the market in 1994. The search for a blood substitute goes on, and there is none in use in clinical practice.
