Perfusion in Britain: the early days

Abstract

Experimental perfusion was largely the province of Germany in the nineteenth century but in the mid-twentieth century the focus of perfusion switched to the USA with the explosive clinical advances of Lillehei, Kirklin and Cooley. British clinical perfusion started with Melrose in 1953 at the Postgraduate Medical School in London but, as in other centres at that time, stopped due to the high mortality. The arrival of hands-on experience of American expertise via returning research fellows and other visitors to the USA enabled the first successful ongoing series to begin at the Hammersmith Hospital with Cleland in 1957 and then to spread around the country. The various problems of those early 1950s days are described in the units starting then.