Status Updates From Heart: A History

Well shit! Mines killed himself by experimenting on stimulus effect! Would make an amazing movie

Mines also discovered that a single stimulus at the wrong moment can stop even healthy hearts (1 finger punch)

Spiral waves caused by waves being blocked in tissue are what leads to constant excitement of the heart cells and basically ruins pressure systems of heart to stop blood flow almost instantly in ventricular fibrillation.
Thanks also Mines

George Mines is first non-nutter to figure stuff out and early on! 1912 maps how electrical impulses travel the heart and can cause a loop which excites offbeat with “reentry” circuit. Stopping all impulse resets the heart and still used today.

It’s great. There’s a lot of learning on the cardiac side of things but there’s a lot of interesting facts. Only downside is that there’s a couple of misconceptions or cases that’s presented that has evidence I just can’t find outside this book. I’m reading it as I work in the OR so it’s pretty cool.

Gruentzig invented the balloon catheter over decades and successful operation got him worldwide recognition

Dotter wasn’t thinking of follow in effects and pushed blockages down to smaller arteries causing heart attacks

Forssmann stuck so many catheters up his veins they were all too scarred to use again. Dude was not right in the head even if he proved the point.

NIH used to be incomprehensibly small. Can scale up again.
“More than 600,000 Americans were dying of heart disease every year. In 1945, the budget for medical research at the National Institutes of Health was $180,000. Five years later, it was $46 million.”

Lillehei reportedly said, You don't venture into a wilderness expecting to find a paved road."

1- a small heart

Part 1- Metaphor. This is the section where a major concept of the perception of the heart has influenced how we think of it scientifically

Prologue discusses an Indian man with a history of cardiological issues. Upon receiving multiple opinions, he was diagnosed with multiple obstructions causing a 30%-50% blockages.

First heart-lung “machine” was actually dogs hooked up such that you stopped the heart of one and pumped blood from the other.
Holy fuck

“His echocardiogram showed vegetations—cheesy specks of infectious material—on both mitral leaflets, flapping around like flags in the wind. The bottom leaflet had been partially eaten away, leaving a gap through which blood was leaking back into the left atrium and farther back into the lungs, filling the air sacs with fluid, slowly drowning him.”

First heart surgeries, 1897!

Ready to forget the Islamic world of the 1200s and 1400s was very educated and worldly