[HIGHLIGHTS] 70 years of the machine that revolutionized cardiac surgery: from the heart being an unexplored territory, to entering the organ and doing transplants

Until 1953 the heart was practically uncharted territory. American doctor John H.

Gibbon had been working for years on the idea of a machine that would do the functions of the heart. On May 6, 1953, at Jefferson University Medical Center in Philadelphia, he used his heart-lung machine to shut down an atrial septal defect in an 18-year-old patient. From blind surgery to open heart surgery, which caused an exponential growth to go from nothing to everything.