Each year, more than 800,000 Americans experience a heart attack. Heart defects affect about 40,000 births per year in the United States, with approximately 1 in 4 of those babies having a critical heart defect that requires surgery or other procedures in the first year of life. Millions of Americans also experience irregular heartbeats known as arrhythmias.
Life-saving heart devices such as pacemakers and defibrillators ensure that those afflicted by heart conditions can live long, healthy lives. However, these treatments only became available to the public in the mid-20th century, after decades of university research.
Claude Beck, a surgeon, achieved worldwide recognition for his contributions to heart surgery and cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Beck trained at Johns Hopkins University and later worked at Harvard University before finishing his career at Case Western Reserve University.
In the 1920s and 1930s, when Beck was performing cardiac surgery, the primary solution to abnormal heart rhythm during surgery was to massage the heart. This method was not always successful and frequently led to patient death on the operating table.
When Beck learned that a colleague at Case Western Reserve was using electrical defibrillation on animals to restore normal heart rhythm, he hypothesized that the method could also work for humans. In 1947, he achieved the first successful defibrillation of the human heart (essentially “rebooting” it to normal rhythm) by delivering a direct electric shock to the heart and reviving a patient in the operating room.
Paul Zoll also contributed to advancements in lifesaving heart devices. Zoll was a graduate of Harvard University and Harvard Medical School and later became chief of the Cardiac Clinic at Harvard’s Beth Israel Hospital. He developed methods for applying electrical shocks to the surface of the chest to stimulate the heart, resulting in chest surface defibrillators, as well as long-term implantable pacemakers and heart rhythm monitors.
Up to 3 million Americans live with pacemakers today, and modern automated external defibrillators (AEDs) are used by first responders every day to treat sudden cardiac arrest, thanks to innovations from university research.
AAU institutions continue to advance the development of life-saving heart devices. Researchers at Northwestern University recently developed a tiny pacemaker, smaller than a grain of rice, that can be injected via syringe and dissolve after it’s no longer needed. The device is perfect for the fragile hearts of newborn babies with congenital heart defects. At Duke University, researchers are piloting the use of drones to deliver AEDs, reducing the crucial time between 911 calls and AED application.