- German surgeon
who shared with André F. Cournand and
Dickinson W. Richards the Nobel
Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1956. A pioneer in heart research, Forssmann contributed to the development of cardiac catheterization,
a procedure in which a tube is inserted into a vein at the elbow and
passed through the vein into the heart. While a surgical resident in
Berlin (1929), Forssmann used himself as the first human subject, watching
the progress of the catheter in a mirror held in front of a fluoroscope
screen. Forssmann's daring experiment was condemned at the time as foolhardy
and dangerous, and in the face of severe criticism he abandoned cardiology
for urology.
Forssmann's procedure,
with slight modifications, was put into practice in 1941 by Richards
and Cournand, and has since become an extremely valuable tool in diagnosis
and research. It has made possible, among other things, precise measurement
of intracardiac pressure and blood flow, injection into the heart of
drugs and of opaque material visible on X-ray photographs, and insertion
of electrodes for the regulation of the heartbeat.
Forssmann graduated
in medicine from the University of Berlin (1928) and then did postgraduate
study in urology at Berlin and Mainz. He served as chief of surgery
at the city hospital in Dresden-Friedrichstadt and in 1958 was named
chief of the surgical division of the Evangelical Hospital in Düsseldorf.
|