Milestones:First External Cardiac Pacemaker, 1950

First External Cardiac Pacemaker, 1950

In 1950, in Room 64 of the Bantling Institute of the University of Toronto, Drs. Wilfred Bigelow and John Callaghan successfully paced the heart of a dog using an external electronic pacemaker-defibrillator having implanted electrodes. The device was developed by Dr. John Hopps at the National Research Council of Canada. This pioneering work led to the use of cardiac pacemakers in humans and helped establish the importance of electronic devices in medicine.

The plaque may be viewed at the front entrance of the C. H. Best Institute, 112 College Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

According to a medical study published by Barber and Madden, up until 1945, the only successful operative cases of cardiac standstill had been treated with cardiac massage and intraventricular injection of adrenaline (33% of 143 such cases survived). Callaghan and Bigelow also report on the work of Hyman (1932) who used a cranked generator and needle inserted into the right auricular wall of guinea pigs to restart their stopped hearts. Also of note is that Sweet restarted to human hearts during operation by applying electrical current to the sino-auricular nodal region. Mark Lidwell from Australia reported at the Third Congress of the Australian Medical Society in 1929 the successful use of electrical stimulation with alternating current in 1928 to restart the heart of a child born in cardiac arrest.

INNOVATION MAP

<googlemap controls="small" height="250" width="300" zoom="10" lon="-79.389428" lat="43.6604" version="0.9"> 43.6604, -73.389428, First External Cardiac Pacemaker, 1950, C. H. Best Institute, 112 College Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada </googlemap>