Pulmonary-Artery Catheters — Peace at Last?

The history of the use of the pulmonary-artery catheter (PAC) illustrates a great deal about physicians' often uncritical acceptance of technology in clinical applications. In 1956, Forssmann, Cournand, and Richards were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the development of heart catheterization and consequent discoveries in cardiac pathophysiology. Forssmann performed the first right heart catheterization, on himself, in 1929. The catheterization work of Cournand and Richards at the Bellevue Hospital Chest Service began in the 1940s, and it initiated a new era in cardiopulmonary physiology, providing important insights into hemodynamics, gas exchange, and heart–lung interactions. Their studies . . .