Heart-Lung Machine
After World War II, director Ashley Weech, MD, began to rebuild the research program at the Children's Hospital Research Foundation of Cincinnati, Ohio.
One of the first new departments he created was child psychiatry, first headed by Richard Wolf, MD. Gradually he added Frederic Silverman, MD, in Radiology; Samuel Kaplan, MD, Cardiology; Clark West, MD, Physiological Chemistry; Eugene Lahey, MD, Hematology; and Benjamin Landing, MD, Pathology.
Even as departmental expansion was taking place, results were occurring. One of Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center's most notable achievements came in 1951, when Dr. Kaplan joined surgeon James Helmsworth, MD, and chemist Leland Clark, PhD, to develop the world's first functional heart-lung machine.
Key to that development was Dr. Clark's creation two years earlier of the bubble oxygenator at Fels Research Institute in Yellow Springs, Ohio.
Dr. Clark also developed numerous electrodes, including the oxygen electrode, used to monitor oxygen levels in blood. This has saved the lives of many patients who would have died for lack of oxygen and has saved the sight of many premature infants who would have gone permanently blind (because of too much oxygen) while being treated for respiratory distress syndrome.
Dr. Clark's work also led to the first "artificial blood" compounds. Capable of carrying oxygen and carbon dioxide, they can be substituted for whole blood and used in emergency transfusions without typing or matching, and without the need for refrigeration or the liability of carrying diseases.
