The creator of the eponymous Heimlich maneuver, he was directly responsible for countless saved lives through the years, thanks to creating a method that average, everyday people could easily learn and use to save others from death-by-choking.
And if you've ever wondered when the Heimlich maneuver was devised , it all went down several decades ago. It was created in Other medical professionals devised sophisticated equipment to contend with such emergencies. Heimlich thought what the world needed was a low-tech solution that anyone, anywhere, could implement.
Working in a lab with anesthetized dogs, he discovered that the application of pressure just below the rib cage, pushing up the diaphragm, could release enough air from the lungs to dislodge, say, the chunk of steak that was causing a diner to suffocate.
Nonetheless, Heimlich was frustrated when neither the American Red Cross nor the National Academy of Sciences was ready to give immediate recognition to the Heimlich maneuver as the preferred method for saving the life of a choking victim. So he took his case directly to the public. According to a article by Jason Zengerle in The New Republic, Heimlich printed up T-shirts and posters depicting the maneuver, made a promotional film, and appeared on "The Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson, in which he guided the host in performing the Heimlich maneuver on actress Angie Dickinson.
The imaginative Dr. Malariotherapy — yes, that's treatment by malaria. As I approached the problem, I decided that since back slaps caused deaths by forcing the object back downward in the airway the answer lay in creating a flow of air upward out of the lungs, using the lungs like a pair of bellows. As a thoracic surgeon, I knew there is always a large amount of residual air in the lungs, even after breathing out. To work up enough force to expel the object, I would have to find a way to compress the lungs sufficiently to create a strong flow of air out of the mouth.
In , I began researching the problem in my laboratory at Cincinnati's Jewish Hospital. I used an endotracheal tube as the foreign body obstructing the airway. I blew up the balloon at the lower end of the tube and closed off the upper end of the tube to prevent the flow of air through it.
I inserted the balloon into the airway of an anaesthetized beagle. The balloon thus acted like a foreign object, such as a piece of meat, obstructing the airway. If I could produce a large flow of air by compressing the lungs, the tube should move upward out of the airway.
I pressed repeatedly on the dog's chest, but the tube did not move. What was wrong? I stopped to analyze the situation. Simply pushing on the chest obviously did not compress the lungs sufficiently. The problem was the rib cage. It was evident pressing on the rigid chest did not compress the lungs at all..
In order to get the proper effect, you would virtually have to crush the ribs. In fact, rib fractures and crushed chests are a common complication of chest compression during CPR --cardiopulmonary resuscitation. I decided to start again. I considered if you pushed the diaphragm upward into the chest, you would markedly reduce the volume of the chest cavity, which would compress the lungs in a very even manner. Moving below the rib cage, I pressed my fist above the dog's belly button and just under the rib cage, thereby pushing the diaphragm upward into the chest..
Instantly the tube shot out of the animal's mouth! Repeating this procedure, I found the same result every time. I was extremely excited! With only a little bit of exertion, I found that pushing upward on the diaphragm drove air out of the lungs, creating a sufficient flow of air to carry the object away from the airway and out the mouth.. I quickly sent my assistant to the hospital cafeteria for a piece of meat. Putting the meat into the animal's larynx or trachea, I again pressed the chest repeatedly.
Nothing happened. Then I pressed upward on the diaphragm. The meat shot out of the dog's mouth! I repeated the procedure over and over.
Each time it worked. At first, I thought the object would have to be stuck tightly in the windpipe, like a champagne cork, in order to create enough pressure to pop it. As I experimented, however, I found that even with a partially obstructing object like a chicken bone, the flow of air past the object was enough to push it upward and out of the mouth. It was the flow of air, as in a small hurricane, not pressure, that carried the object away.
What was the actual measure of airflow? I soon discovered that by carrying out a series of tests with ten of my fellow doctors and hospital residents, the air flow was fairly easy to calculate. One at a time, each of us was fitted with a mouthpiece that connected by tubing to a machine that measured the flow of air passing out of our mouths when the diaphragm was forced upward with a fist.
Today, of course, the results would be measured by computer but in our day it was measured by a graph on a rotating drum. The figures were astounding. The pressure was minimal, in keeping with the engineering saying, "The higher the flow, the lower the pressure.
But how to administer this effort? The technique had to be simple. When a child chokes on something, the parent has less than four minutes to save him from death or permanent brain injury. You couldn't depend on a household instrument because you might not be able to locate it. You certainly couldn't call ; it would take emergency teams too long to respond. It had to be a procedure that could be performed by anyone. In the Heimlich maneuver was conceived of by Dr. Henry Heimlich, a thoracic surgeon, who noted that many people were dying each year from choking.
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