ABSTRACT
The development of cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) can be largely attributed to the pioneering work of John Gibbon, who demonstrated its first successful use in animals in the 1930s and performed the first successful human open heart operation in 1953, when he repaired an atrial septal defect using CPB. This initial success was unfortunately followed by several deaths, and he became discouraged by the results and postponed its subsequent human use. At around the same time, C. Walton Lillehei began using controlled cross-circulation from parent to child to allow intracardiac repairs. In 1965, John Kirklin used a modified Gibbon heart-lung machine for intracardiac repair in a series of patients, heralding the era of CPB. Since this early work, progressive developments have occurred in materials used and in surgical techniques to improve the safety, reliability, and efficacy of CPB.
