Dr. Henry Heimlich, the pioneering thoracic surgeon who invented the anti-choking maneuver that has saved countless lives, died over the weekend due to complications form a heart attack he suffered earlier in the week. He was 96 years old.
Dr. Heimlich is best known for the maneuver that bears his name, which has saved thousands of individuals form choking to death. The Heimlich maneuver, first introduced in 1974, has been unofficially credited with saving roughly 100,000 people. The maneuver is performed by wrapping your arms around a choking person’s waist and placing a fist thumbside just underneath the ribcage and between the lungs. Then, with a quick upwards thrust, a perfectly executed maneuver can help dislodge an airway obstruction with a burst of expelled air. According to testimonials and firsthand accounts, some people who have had their airways unclogged by the maneuver include President Ronald Reagan, Cher, Halle Berry, Nicole Kidman and Carrie Fisher.
Interestingly, Dr. Heimlich performed his maneuver not too long ago. Back in May, he performed the technique on a choking woman at a Cincinnati retirement center where they both lived.
Other Medical Innovations
Although Dr. Heimlich was best known for the anti-choking technique, he also left his mark on the medical community in other ways – some much more positive than others. For starters, he also developed an innovative device known as the Heimlich Chest Drain Valve, which has been credited with saving thousands of US soldiers suffering from gunshot wounds to the chest. He also helped to develop the Micro-Trach, which is a small device that delivers oxygen to the lungs through a narrow breathing tube inserted into the trachea.
Although he’s helped save the lives of hundreds of thousands of individuals over the course of his career, not all of his innovations were greeted with praise form the medical community. He became embroiled in controversy later in life when he advocated injecting a curable form of malaria in patients with HIV in order to induce fevers and stimulate their immune systems to fight the other infection. He led clinical trials in Mexico and China because the US would never grant him clearance. The CDC also issued a harsh criticism of the research, saying, “without evidence — either in-vitro or in-vivo — to support the hypothesis that malaria suppresses HIV infection or delays the development of AIDS, the use of induced malaria infection in HIV-infected individuals cannot be justified.”