Former director of surgery at Jewish Hospital in Cincinnati, who devised choking treatment in 1974, had heart attack earlier this week, son says

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

The surgeon who created the life-saving Heimlich maneuver for choking victims has died. Dr Henry Heimlich died early on Saturday at Christ Hospital in Cincinnati. He was 96. His son Phil said he had suffered a heart attack earlier in the week.

Dr Henry Heimlich uses Heimlich manoeuvre to save a life at 96 Read more

Heimlich was director of surgery at the Jewish Hospital in Cincinnati in 1974 when he devised the treatment for choking victims that made his name a household word.



Rescuers using the procedure abruptly squeeze a victim’s abdomen, pushing in and above the navel with the fist to create a flow of air from the lungs. That flow of air then can push objects out of the windpipe and prevent suffocation.

The Wilmington, Delaware, native estimated the maneuver had saved the lives of thousands of choking victims in the US alone.

In May this year it was reported that he had used the maneuver to save the life of another resident of his retirement home. Reports subsequently emerged of a previous use of the maneuver, in 2000.

Of his aid to Patty Ris, 87, in May, Heimlich said: “I did the Heimlich maneuver – of course. She was going to die if she wasn’t treated. I did it, and a piece of food with some bone in it flew out of her mouth.”

Ris told the Cincinnati Enquirer she wrote Heimlich a note, saying: “God put me in this seat next to you.”

Much of Heimlich’s 2014 autobiography focuses on the maneuver. In a February 2014 interview he said that in 1972, thousands of deaths reported annually from choking prompted him to seek a solution.

During the next two years he led a team of researchers, successfully testing the technique by putting a tube with a balloon at one end down an anesthetized dog’s airway until the animal choked. He then used the maneuver to force the dog to expel the obstruction.

The maneuver was adopted by public health authorities, airlines and restaurant associations, and Heimlich appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and The Today Show.



His views on how the maneuver should be used and on other innovations put him at odds with some in the health field. He said his memoir was an effort to preserve his technique.

“I know the maneuver saves lives, and I want it to be used and remembered,” he said. “I felt I had to have it down in print so the public will have the correct information.”

The maneuver has continued to make headlines. Clint Eastwood was attending a golf event in Monterey, California, in 2014 when the then 83-year-old actor saw the tournament director choking on a piece of cheese. Eastwood successfully performed the technique.

“The best thing about it is that it allows anyone to save a life,” Heimlich said.

Heimlich said the maneuver was very effective when used correctly, but he did not approve of American Red Cross guidelines calling for back blows followed by abdominal thrusts in choking cases that do not involve infants or unconscious victims.

Red Cross officials said evidence showed using multiple methods can be more effective, but Heimlich said blows can drive obstructions deeper into a windpipe. The American Heart Association backs abdominal thrusts.



Neither organization supported Heimlich’s view that using the maneuver to remove water from the lungs could save drowning victims. They recommend CPR.

Heimlich was proud of some of his other innovations, such as a chest drain valve credited by some with saving soldiers and civilians during the Vietnam war. But he drew sharp criticism for his theory that injecting patients with a curable form of malaria could trigger immunity in patients with the HIV virus that causes Aids.

Medical experts have said injecting patients with malaria would be dangerous and have criticized Heimlich for conducting studies involving malariotherapy on HIV patients in China.

Heimlich mostly brushed off his critics.

“I’ll be the first to admit that a number of my ideas are controversial and in some ways unorthodox,” Heimlich said. “But I have enough guts to know that when I am right, it will come about as the thing to do, even if others do the wrong thing for a time.”

One of his most vocal critics was his younger son, Peter Heimlich, who split with his father years ago over a personal rift and initially circulated anonymous criticisms of his father before openly speaking out against him online and in media interviews.

Peter Heimlich has called many of his father’s theories dangerous and spent years challenging many of his claims. Dr Heimlich maintained that his relationship with his son was a family matter refused to comment on it to the media.

Heimlich attended Cornell University’s undergraduate and medical schools and interned at Boston City Hospital. During the second world war, the US navy sent him to north-west China in 1942 to treat Chinese and American forces behind Japanese lines in the Gobi desert.

Beginning in the 1950s, he held staff surgeon positions at New York’s Metropolitan Hospital and Montefiore Hospital and Medical Center. He later was an attending surgeon on the staffs at the Jewish and Deaconess hospitals in Cincinnati and a researcher at his not-for-profit Heimlich Institute.

Heimlich’s wife, Jane, daughter of the late dance teacher Arthur Murray, died in November 2012. He is survived by two sons and two daughters.

Phil Heimlich said a private family service and burial was planned soon. The family hoped to arrange a public memorial, he added, that would give his father’s friends and admirers a chance to pay their respects.