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Synthetic Organs
TIMELINE
A BRIEF HISTORY OF SYNTHETIC ORGANS
1925
Georg Haas of Germany performs first clinical hemo-dialysis of 5 patients, using a modification of the Hopkins artificial kidney.
1937
Vladimir Petrovich Demikhov employed an extra-corporeal assist device for 5.5 hours to substitute for the cardiac function of a dog.
1947
Dr. Willem Johan Kolff begins research to develop a heart-lung machine and an artificial heart.
1954
The first successful kidney transplant in unrelated humans is performed
by Joseph Murray of Boston.
1956
Dr. Kolff finishes development of one of the first heart-lung machines, which does the same job that your heart and lungs would do.
1957
Dr. Kolff and Dr. Tetsuzo Akutsu conduct a series of animal implants with the artificial heart at the Cleveland Clinic; a dog survives for about 90 minutes.
1961
Samuel Lee Kountz Jr. performs the first successful kidney transplant between two people who were close relatives.
1967
Dr. Christiaan Barnard performs the first successful heart transplant in Cape Town, South Africa.
1968
Thomas Starzl of Denver performs the first successful human liver transplant, after his first patient, a 3 year old boy with biliary atresia, bled to death during surgery.
1969
Dr. Denton Cooley implants a pneumatically-powered heart as a bridge-to-transplantation into a 47-year-old male.
1971
Adrian Kantrowitz implants the dynamic aortic patch,now known as the Kantrowitz CardioVad, in a patient who had terminal heart failure.
1985
Dr. Jack Copeland becomes the first surgeon to successfully use the Jarvik 7 in his patient Michael Drummond, who lived 9 days on the Jarvik 7 before receiving a donor heart.
Dr. Jack Copeland becomes the first surgeon to successfully use the Jarvik 7 in his patient Michael Drummond, who lived 9 days on the Jarvik 7 before receiving a donor heart.
1996
Mary Lund, of Kensington, Minnesota, becomes the first woman to receive an artificial heart at age 40; Dr. Lyle Joyce lead the surgical team.
2004
The CardioWest Total Artificial Heart (TAH) becomes aproved by the FDA, becoming the first TAH to do so; it gets officially named the SynCardia temporary CardioWest Total Artificial Heart through the FDA approval process.
2014
A new bio-printing method developed at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University creates intricately patterned, 3-D tissue constructed with multiple types of cells and tiny blood vessels.
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