ARAB TIMES, MONDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2016
HEALTH
31
Technique credited with saving thousands of choking victims
Heimlich, inventor of life-saving maneuver, dies at 96
WASHINGTON, Dec 18, (RTRS): Henry
Heimlich, the medical maverick who came
up with a maneuver credited with saving
thousands of choking victims but who damaged his standing as a proponent of the curative powers of malaria, died on Saturday at
the age of 96.
Heimlich, a doctor who developed a lifesaving technique to dislodge airway blockages, died at Christ Hospital in Cincinnati of
complications from a massive heart attack
he suffered on Monday, his family said in a
statement.
A thoracic surgeon who often feuded with
the established medical community, Heimlich said the maneuver which was named
after him saved more than 100,000 lives. He
claimed to have used it himself last May on
another resident of the Cincinnati retirement
home where he lived.
Wonderful
“It made me appreciate how wonderful it
has been to be able to save all those lives,” he
once told the Cincinnati Enquirer.
Heimlich came up with the ground-breaking technique in 1974 after reading about the
high rate of deaths in restaurants that first
were attributed to heart attacks, but later
found to have been caused by diners choking
on food.
An ordinary person could be a hero with
“the Heimlich Maneuver” - it requires no
equipment, no great strength and only minimal training.
The popular wisdom at the time called for
repeatedly slapping the back of person struggling with an obstruction of the passage to
the lungs.
But Heimlich, who was then at Jewish
Hospital in Cincinnati, believed the back
slaps could force the blockage deeper. To
prove his method, he took anesthetized lab
dogs, blocked their windpipes with hunks of
meat attached to strings in case of emergency
and developed a technique that would send
his name around the world.
The Heimlich Maneuver called for the
rescuer to stand behind the choking victim,
apply the thumb-side of a fist to a spot just
under the diaphragm and between the lungs.
By pushing sharply on that spot, a surge
of air from the lungs would then expel the
blockage.
“Dad was a hero to many people around
the world for a simple reason: He helped
save untold numbers of lives through the innovation of common-sense procedures and
devices,” his family said in the statement.
“But he was not only a physician and medical inventor, he was also a humanitarian and
a loving and devoted son, husband, father
and grandfather.”
Heimlich wrote about his discovery for a
medical journal and it began to spread due
to media coverage. A man in Washington
state who came to a neighbor’s rescue was
credited with being the first person to use
the Heimlich Maneuver shortly after reading
a newspaper story about it. The charismatic
doctor also busily promoted the technique,
including appearances on late-night television talk shows with Johnny Carson and David Letterman.
Heimlich collected anecdotes about Heimlich rescues throughout his life. Among them
were the aide who saved Ronald Reagan during his 1976 presidential campaign and Tom
Brokaw coming to the aid of fellow NBC
newsman John Chancellor.
Actress Cher was saved by director Robert
In this Feb 5, 2014 file photo, Dr Henry Heimlich holds his memoir prior to being interviewed at his home in Cincinnati. (AP)
Altman and Clint Eastwood once prevented a
partygoer from choking. In 2015, a 13-yearold boy was able to clear a classmate’s
blockage after learning the move watching
the cartoon “SpongeBob SquarePants.”
It took more than a decade for the medical
establishment to adopt the Heimlich Maneuver, partly because there had been no official
human trials. The American Red Cross recommended it only as a secondary method to
back-slapping.
In 1984, Heimlich was given the prestigious Lasker Award for public service. A
year later C. Everett Koop, then the U.S.
surgeon general, said the Heimlich method
should be “the only method” used for choking victims.
In 1986, it was officially recommended as
the primary anti-choking technique by the
Red Cross, although the organization would
reverse that decision in 2006, saying “abdominal thrusts” should only be a secondary
method.
As the Heimlich Maneuver became part of
American culture, its namesake sought more
innovation. He thought his technique should
also be used to clear mucus from the lungs
during an asthma attack and was better than
cardiopulmonary resuscitation for drowning victims - claims that were dismissed by
authorities such as the Red Cross and the
American Medical Association.
Heimlich damaged his credibility further
by espousing malaria therapy, saying the
high fevers of malaria stimulated the body’s
immune system enough to counter AIDS,
cancer and Lyme disease.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention discounted that theory, but under
Heimlich’s direction, human malaria therapy
trials were conducted in Mexico, China and
Africa because they would never have been
permitted in the United States.
“I don’t follow all the rules if there’s a
better, faster way to do it,” he told the Los
Angeles Times in a 1994 interview. “If your
peers understand what you’ve done, you are
not being creative.”
His fiercest critic turned out to be son Peter, who had once played in a band called
Choke and done the music for Heimlich’s
promotional film. The son devoted himself
to debunking Heimlich’s work - first in a
pseudonymous blog - and denounced him as
the creator of “a remarkable unseen history
of fraud.”
Heimlich’s work with malarial therapy to
fight AIDS was briefly a popular cause in the
mid-1990s, especially in Hollywood, where
celebrities hosted fundraisers for his research
and donors included Jack Nicholson, Bob
Hope and Ron Howard.
Dr. Edward Patrick, a longtime collaborator who died in 2009, issued a press release
in 2003 saying he was the co-developer of
the Heimlich Maneuver.
Heimlich also was credited with inventing a valve that bears his name and is used
to prevent air from filling the chest cavity in
trauma cases.