When was Defibrillation invented ? Who invented defibrillator ? What is the history of Defibrillation ?
Defibrillation was first presented in 1899 by Prevost and Batelli, two physiologists from the University of Geneva, Switzerland. In animal studies, they observed that small electrical shocks delivered to the heart can trigger ventricular fibrillation, and delivery of large electrical charges can reverse fibrillation.
In 1947, the defibrillation procedure was used for the first time in a human patient. Claude Beck, a professor of surgery at Case Western Reserve University, underwent surgery on a 14-year-old boy due to a chest defect and managed to restore the normal sinus rhythm in the child’s heart.
The first forms of the defibrillator gave the heart a load of 300 to 1000 volts using “paddle” type electrodes. However, the units had significant disadvantages such as needing open heart surgery, transformers large and difficult to move, and post-mortem examination showed that the technique was damaging the heart muscles. Also, the technique actually failed to reverse reverse ventricular fibrillation.
In the 1950s, an alternative method to deliver electrical shock to the heart was pioneered by V.Eskin and his colleague A. Klimov from the USSR. Rather than the paddle electrodes used in open heart surgery, the closed chest device can apply a 1000 volt charge through the nodes applied outside the rib cage.
In 1959, Bernard Lown and engineer Barouh Berkovits developed the way to use a resistor using the load to create a less powerful sinusoidal wave that would last 5 milliseconds using the impeller electrodes. The researchers also determined the optimal timing of when shocks should be delivered, allowing the technique to be applied in other cases of arrhythmia, such as atrial fibrillation, atrial flutter, and a tachycardia.
