“Many are the trysts I’ve had With the mortals here, Their bodies offered to my trust, To cut and sew and maybe cure.” —John Heysham Gibbon Jr., 1960
World-Changing
Work Millions of lives have been saved by the vision and work of this persistent OPC. by Connie Langland
John Heysham Gibbon Jr. OPC ’19 must count among the most illustrious – and most persistent – of William Penn Charter School graduates. Gibbon, a fifth-generation physician, is credited with developing the first heart-lung machines and also with performing the world’s first successful open-heart operation using total cardiopulmonary bypass. On May 6, 1953, Gibbon made history when he closed a hole between the upper heart chambers of 18-year-old Cecelia Bavolek of Wilkes-Barre, Pa., in surgery at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. For 27 minutes, Bavolek’s heart and A graduate of Penn Charter, Princeton and Jefferson Medical College, John Heysham Gibbon Jr. opened a new era in the history of cardiac surgery by developing the first heart-lung machine and performing the first successful surgery with it on May 6, 1953. Courtesy of Thomas Jefferson University Archives & Special Collections, Philadelphia.
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lung function were totally supported by a machine conceived and designed by Gibbon and then refined by Gibbon and a team of IBM engineers. It was a success that was two decades in the making. Gibbon’s achievement cannot be overstated: The heartlung machine launched the modern era of cardiac surgery – eventually including heart transplants and surgery to repair otherwise fatal heart defects in the tiniest of infants. The machine moved blood from the veins through a catheter into the machine, where the blood was cooled, supplied with oxygen and then pumped back into the arteries. His own words had been recorded five years earlier: “Some day the heart-lung machine will become a practical affair.” And it has: Half a million surgeries a year in the United States; many, many more across the globe. The estimate since 1970 stands at 15-20 million benefiting from the work of this pioneer. continued on next page
Spring 2011 The Magazine of William Penn Charter School
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