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when he was not at the hospital.
Dr. Mirowski was very upset by Dr. Heller’s death. He
determined to develop an implantable defibrillator device in
order to prevent people, like Dr. Heller, who suffered from
ventricular fibrillation from dying because they were not in a
hospital near a defibrillator when they suffered an episode of
that condition or from having to stay continuously in a hospital
in order to be near a defibrillator in the event of such an
episode.
In 1968, in order to obtain funding to develop an im-
plantable defibrillator device, Dr. Mirowski and Ms. Mirowski
emigrated to the United States. Initially, Dr. Mirowski was
ostracized in the medical community for his efforts to develop
such a device. He nonetheless persevered. Over a ten-year
period, Dr. Mirowski and a team of scientists developed an
electronic device known as the automatic implantable cardioverter
defibrillator (ICD) to monitor and correct abnormal heart
rhythms. In 1980, the ICD was successfully implanted for the
first time in a human.4
Dr. Mirowski, who eventually became chief of cardiology at
Sinai Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland (Baltimore), and a profes-
4At the time of the trial in this case, more than 1.2 mil-
lion patients worldwide had received ICDs. The ICD has been
referred to as the greatest contribution to cardiology in the
last century.
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Last modified: March 27, 2008