A team of GM scientists and engineers developed the mechanical heart pump that made possible the world’s first open heart surgery. The device was developed and donated by GM at no cost to the heart surgery team at Wayne State University in Detroit.
Details regarding this development and GM's involvement were documented in the Journal of Cardiac Surgery, Vol. 17, No. 3, May/June 2002. Dr. Larry Stephenson, Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Wayne State University in Detroit, is an expert on the history of this device.
The Dodrill-GMR Mechanical Heart is a 12-cylinder pump for temporarily replacing the human heart during heart surgery. It was the first mechanical heart in the world used successfully to keep a patient's entire bloodstream circulating. This mechanical heart was designed, built and tested cooperatively by Harper Hospital in Detroit, the Michigan Heart Association, and General Motors Research Laboratories (GMRL) (originally a 6 pump unit) in the early 1950s. It has been referrred to as a landmark in cooperative research between medical men and engineers. Medical Science was a auxiliary exhibit by GM Research in the Applied Research section of the Avenue of Progress-New York World's Fair. SOURCE: GMR Exhibits report [SOURCE: General Motors Text File and 1965 World's Fair Log Book]
