Cardiology

A rubber tube to the heart

The history of the world´s first heart catheterization

4min

Katharina Schroll-Bakes

Published on February 10, 2022

“I no longer remember the date on which it all took place. All I know is that it was a beautiful, sunny day in early summer.” In his biography, this is how the physician Werner Forssmann describes the day on which he transformed the world of cardiac diagnostics forever with a daring self-experiment.

Krankhaus Auguste-Viktoria-Heim in Eberswalde

The Auguste-Victoria Hospital in Eberswalde
Source: Forssmann family archive

Werner Forssmann mit seiner Frau Elisabeth

Werner Forssmann assessing an X-ray with his wife, Elisabeth, at his practice in Bad Kreuznach in the early 1950s
Source: Forssmann family archive

From that point onward, everything had to be done in secret. Over the next few weeks, Forssmann planned the experiment down to the very last detail. With a bit of cunning, he obtained some sterile instruments, took advantage of the relative quiet of the lunch hour, and locked himself away in the hospital’s small operating room. In no time at all, he had opened the vein in his left arm in order to introduce a well-oiled ureteral catheter into his body. Once the tube was inserted into his arm, he ran to the X-ray room and used the fluoroscopic screen to check the position of the catheter, pushing it further and further until it reached the right chamber of the heart. “I asked for X-rays to be taken in order to serve as documentary evidence.”

rubber catheter in Werner Forssmann’s right atrium

X-ray image to document cardiac catheterization, showing the catheter extending into the right atrium
Source: Werner Forssmann, “Die Sondierung des rechten Herzens” [“Probing of the right heart”], Klinische Wochenschrift, No. 45, 1929