Maintenance of Life With Intravenous Oxygen: Article from a Pioneer

By 1950, Dr. John Gibbon had developed the heart lung machine used in the experimental laboratory.  For an oxygenator, he used a turning drum or a series of discs to expose a thin layer of blood to an oxgenated atmosphere.  Clarke, Gollan, and Gupta at Antioch used a bubble oxygenator and removed the larger bubbles with Dow Corning antifoam, which was used in the brewery industry.  The bubble oxygenator was simpler since it required only a sintered steel or porcelain filter, was much smaller, very effective and disposable.

At that time, however, there have been widely published legal cases where euthanasia had been effected with intravenous air. It was known that the smallest bubbles could not be removed in the above fashion.  We demonstrated for the first time that animals breathing pure nitrogen could be kept alive with intravenous oxygen if the bubbles were extremely small.  We were able to accomplish this by using a wetting agent continuously applied to the filter surface.  When our work was presented at the Forum of the American College of Surgeons it was selected for a press conference which resulted in wide circulation of the content (see enclosed).

Dr. Walton Lillehei at the University of Minnesota had been attempting intracardiac surgery with concomitant cross transfusions between patient and donor.  He corresponded with me and visited our laboratory (department of surgery – Dr. Warren Cole chief) at the University of Illinois Medical School in Chicago.  Our experimental apparatus, concepts, and findings were reciewed with him by one of our residents since he was one day late to our mutual appointment.

Dr. Lillehei with Dr. DeWall then built and clinically established a heart lung machine using a bubble oxygenator.  This became the standard method for oxygenating blood in the heart lung machine until the membrane oxygenator was perfected approximately twenty years ago.  Our work was not referenced in their publications.