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Portable defibrillator — Frank Pantridge

1965 AD · Transmission: Silenced
MedicineInventionBritish

Frank Pantridge, a cardiologist at Belfast's Royal Victoria Hospital, develops in 1965 the first portable defibrillator in history together with his resident John Geddes, and installs it in a Belfast ambulance in January 1966. The original device weighed 70 kg and ran on car batteries. He publishes the results in The Lancet in 1967. His work founds modern prehospital cardiology: the principle that ventricular fibrillation treated within the first minutes saves lives is today the foundation of all CPR and AED protocols worldwide. Pantridge is practically unknown outside Northern Ireland despite his devices having saved, by medical estimates, millions of lives.

InstitutionRoyal Victoria Hospital, Belfast
Historical regionNorthern Ireland (United Kingdom)
Primary sourcePantridge, J.F.; Geddes, J.S. — "A mobile intensive-care unit in the management of myocardial infarction" (The Lancet, 1967)
Secondary sourcePMC/BMJ — Frank Pantridge obituary (2004); Archives of IT — Professor Frank Pantridge
Original languageEnglish
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