1953

On May 6, John Gibbon’s first successful use of his IBM-built heart-lung machine, which kept patient alive for 26 minutes while he repaired the ASD of 18-year-old Cecelia Bavolet at Jefferson Hospital in Phila . “This operation was the first successful open- heart operation in the world using a heart-lung machine” (Gibbon, 619). But his next two attempts in July were disasters and he suspended open-heart surgery at Jefferson for a year and never again performed open-heart surgery himself (Miller, 87-90; Morris, loc 1763ff.).