|
1944
|
Alfred
Blalock performed the first "blue-baby operation"
for tetralogy of Fallot, a shunt procedure developed
with Helen Taussig and Vivien Thomas.
|
|
1948
|
The
National Heart Act was passed, establishing the
National Heart Institute (now the National Heart,
Lung, and Blood Institute) and supporting research
and training.
|
|
1948
|
Under
the direction of the National Heart Institute,
the Framingham Heart Study was launched and began
to identify the common factors or characteristics
that contribute to cardiovascular disease.
|
|
1948
|
Dwight
Harken and Charles Bailey independently reported
surgical procedures to relieve mitral stenosis.
|
|
1949
|
The
American College of Cardiology was established
to provide continuing medical education for physicians
specializing in the treatment of cardiovascular
disease.
|
|
1953
|
John
Gibbon, Jr., performed the first successful open
heart operation using a heart-lung machine that
he invented; the patient had an atrial septal
defect.
|
|
1954
|
Inge
Edler, with physicist C. Hellmuth Hertz, reported
using ultrasound to image the beating heart in
humans.
|
|
1956
|
André
Frédéric Cournand, Werner Forssmann,
and Dickinson W. Richards shared a Nobel Prize
for their pioneering work in cardiac catheterization.
|
|
1958
|
F.
Mason Sones, Jr., introduced selective coronary
arteriography as a diagnostic tool.
|
|
1958
|
Henry
T. Bahnson first resuscitated a patient, a two-year-old
child in ventricular fibrillation, by external
cardiac massage (now referred to as CPR), and
closed-chest defibrillation.
|
|
1960
|
Dwight
Harken performed the first successful aortic heart
valve replacement.
|
|
1960
|
William
Chardack, Andrew Gage, and Wilson Greatbatch reported
the first successful surgical insertion of an
implantable pacemaker.
|
|
1960
|
Richard
Lower and Norman Shumway reported the first successful
orthotropic cardiac transplantation in a canine.
|
|
1960
|
William
B. Kouwenhoven, C. Guy Knickerbocker, and James
R. Jude published a report in the Journal of
the American Medical Association on the successful
use of external cardiac massage (CPR), as a method
to restart the heart.
|
|
1961
|
The
Framingham Heart Study found that high cholesterol
levels increase the risk of heart disease.
|
|
1962
|
Hughes
Day opened the first coronary care unit, an 11-bed
unit at the Bethany Medical Center, in Kansas.
|
|
1965
|
The
Surgeon General’s warning, "Caution: Cigarette
smoking may be hazardous to your health," was
added to cigarette packages.
|
|
1966
|
Melvin
P. Judkins introduced the method he developed
for transfemoral selective coronary angiography,
known as the Judkins technique.
|
|
1968
|
René
Favaloro reported using a saphenous vein graft
to perform the bypass surgery of a human coronary
artery.
|
|
1968
|
Norman
Shumway performed the first adult cardiac allotransplant
in the United States.
|
|
1970
|
H.J.C.
Swan and William Ganz invented the balloon-tipped,
flow-directed pulmonary artery catheter, the "Swan-Ganz,"
which allowed for right heart catheterization
to be conducted at the bedside.
|
|
1972
|
Harvey
Feigenbaum published the first American monograph
on echocardiography and began his tireless promotion
of the technology.
|
|
1976
|
E.I.
Cházov and colleagues reported the successful
reperfusion of an infarct-related artery with
intracoronary streptokinase in a patient with
an acute myocardial infarction.
|
|
1977
|
Andreas
Gruentzig performed the first angioplasty on an
awake patient, which was the first case to be
entered into a worldwide percutaneous transluminal
coronary angioplasty (PTCA) registry.
|
|
1984
|
Using
transvenous catheter ablation, Fred Morady and
Melvin M. Scheinman successfully ablated the posteroseptal
accessory pathway in a patient with Wolf-Parkinson-White
syndrome.
|
|
1986
|
Jacques
Puel and Ulrich Sigwart inserted the first stent
in a human coronary artery.
|
|
1998
|
Timothy
D. Henry reported that the protein vascular endothelial
growth factor (VEGF) could prompt new blood vessel
growth to increase blood flow to the heart.
|
