The Cleveland Memory Project
Cleveland: Pioneer in Cardiac Care
A History of Success & Innovation
Cleveland contributed to the advancement of cardiac care in three major areas: research into heart conditions, developing technology for heart care, and pioneering surgical and exploratory procedures.
Research
In the 1940s and 50s Cleveland led the world in research on the causes of high-blood pressure and its effects on the heart. Dr. Irvine Page, Dr. Harriet P. Dustan, Harry Goldblatt, and many others conducted research at Mt. Sinai Hospital, Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Clinic. Research into cholesterol at CWRU and Dr. Helen Brown’s research on low-fat diets at the Cleveland Clinic all helped in understanding how heart disease occurred. The research conducted in Cleveland allowed Dr. Page to develop his mosaic theory of high blood pressure and his involvement with the American Heart Association only increased Cleveland’s status as a center for heart care and research.
Technology
Hand-in-hand with research was the development of new technology that allowed Cleveland doctors to become pioneers in many areas of cardiac care. The many manufacturing plants in the area not only produced products designed by doctors and researchers from Cleveland, but from other areas of the country as well. Pemco, Inc. worked with Drs. Frederick Cross and Richard D. Jones to create the Cross-Jones valve, as well as the rotating disc oxygenator developed at St. Luke’s Hospital by Drs. Earle B. Kay, Robert M. Berne, and Richard Jones. Another manufacturing company in Cleveland, Precision Metalsmiths, Inc., also manufactured replacement heart valves.
The Cleveland Clinic led the way in research and development of artificial hearts. Partnering with NASA’s Lewis Research Center and Goodyear Rubber and Tire Co., the technology of artificial hearts advanced rapidly. Goodyear developed early artificial hearts from molds, and Lewis Research Center developed external machines to keep the hearts pumping. Dr. Claude Beck even developed an early heart pump machine to use in research, as well as an early defibrillator for resuscitating patients whose hearts had stopped.
Procedures:
Cleveland cardiologists may not have always been the first to do a procedure, but they were often responsible for making it reproducible and safe to use on humans. Dr. Claude S. Beck created two operations for diseases of the heart. In 1935, he created the Beck I operation, cardiopericardiopexy, which increases blood flow to the myocardium of the heart by causing irritation or inflammation of the membranes. The Beck II operation was developed in the 1940s and increased blood flow to the heart by placing a vein graft between the aorta and coronary sinus. Dr. Back also performed the first successful defibrillation in 1947 and became an avid supporter of teaching cardiac massage techniques to help save lives of heart attack victims.
The exploratory technique of arterial catheterization was improved and perfected by doctors in Cleveland. Dr. Henry A. Zimmerman developed a technique to catheterize the left side of the heart, and wrote a seminal textbook on catheterization techniques. Dr. F. Mason Sones Jr., of the Cleveland Clinic, invented the technique called angiography, which used X-ray cameras to follow die injected to the arteries. Surgeons at St. Luke’s Hospital and the Cleveland Clinic were also pioneers in open-heart surgeries, performing one of the first few heart transplants in the nation, as well as the first successful stopped-heart surgery on a human. In 1967, Dr. Renee Favaloro pioneered the coronary bypass technique when he harvested a vein from a patient’s leg to graft onto the heart and increase blood flow.