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Defibrillator History
Because the current state of medical technology is so advanced and is able to deliver such amazing medical results it is actually quite easy to forget about how far they have come. Here is a brief outline of the defibrillator history to help remind you of how much we have to be thankful for in today’s medical devices. Defibrillation was first demonstrated in 1899 by Prevost and Batelli who were two physiologists who taught and studied at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. They are the first people to who have discovered that small electric shocks, which is now referred to as electric therapy could actually induce ventricular fibrillation in dogs, but more importantly they realized that larger charges were capable of actually reversing the condition. However, it was not until 1947 that we got a glimpse of the first time this electric therapy was attempted on a human. Claude Beck, a professor of surgery at Case Western Reserve University first had success with a 14 year old boy with the use of paddles and was able to get the boy’s heart back to a healthy sinus rhythm. The type of defibrillator that Beck used incorporated an alternating current from a power socket, transformed from the 110-240 volts available in the line, up to between 300 and 1000 volts, to the heart with paddle shaped electrodes. Since then, the types of waves used to deliver the electricity have changed and improved to use biphasic truncated waveform (BTE). Another major breakthrough was the portable defibrillators which arrived in the late 1960s Related Information Defibrillator Analyzer Defibrillator Leads  |
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