Precordial Thump - History

History

Drs. James E. Pennington and Bernard Lown's cardiology group at Harvard University are credited with formalizing this technique in the medical literature. They published their report in the New England Journal of Medicine in the early 1970s. Drs. Richard S. Crampton and George Craddock, cardiologists at the University of Virginia helped to promote the paramedic use of chest thump through a curious accident. In 1970, the Charlottesville-Albemarle Rescue Squad (VA) was transporting a patient with an unstable cardiac rhythm in what was then called a Mobile Coronary Care Unit. When the vehicle inadvertently hit a speed bump in a shopping center parking lot, the patient's normal heart rhythm was restored. Further research confirmed that chest thumping patients with life-threatening arrhythmias could save lives .

Read more about this topic:  Precordial Thump

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.
    Albert Camus (1913–1960)

    Indeed, the Englishman’s history of New England commences only when it ceases to be New France.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    I am not a literary man.... I am a man of science, and I am interested in that branch of Anthropology which deals with the history of human speech.
    —J.A.H. (James Augustus Henry)