At 96, inventor of the Heimlich manoeuvre leaps into action again
HIS name is famous around the world for the life- saving technique he invented.
And, aged 96, Dr Henry Heimlich has proved that he hasn’t forgotten how to do the manoeuvre he invented in 1974 .
The American retired chest surgeon saved an elderly woman who was choking at his residential care home using the Heimlich manoeuvre.
He was in the dining room at the Deupree House in Cincinnati where he has lived for six years when an 87- year- old woman began choking.
Leaping into action, Dr Heimlich used his technique to dislodge a piece of hamburger from Patty Ris’s airway and she began breathing again.
Dr Heimlich said: ‘When I used it, and she recovered quickly.
‘It made me appreciate how wonderful it has been to be able to save all those lives.’
He is credited with inventing the series of abdominal thrusts aimed at dislodging food from the windpipe, having first explained his technique in a June 1974 article in the journal Emergency Medicine. On June 19, 1974, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper reported that retired restaurant owner Isaac Piha used the procedure perhaps for the first time to rescue a choking victim in Bellevue, Washington. Since then, countless lives have been saved by the technique. Dr Heimlich said this week that he had demonstrated the wellknown manoeuvre many times over the years – but had used it only once on someone who was choking.
In 2000, he used it to save a life for the first time, when he was eating in a restaurant.
In an interview in 2003, he said: ‘I was in this club restaurant eating when I heard someone calling Dr Heimlich.
‘I turned around and saw a man choking so I did the Heimlich manoeuvre and got it out and then went on and had my lunch.’
His son, Phil Heimlich, said his father regularly meets people who were either saved or saved somebody else.
‘Just the fact that a 96-year-old man could perform that, is impressive,’ he added.
In a thank-you note, an understandably grateful Mrs Ris wrote to Dr Heimlich: ‘God put me in this seat next to you.’
Bryan Reynolds, a spokesman for Episcopal Retirement Services, which owns Deupree House, described Dr Heimlich as very active for his age.