Cardiology
A rubber tube to the heart
The history of the world´s first heart catheterization
4min
Published on February 10, 2022

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

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

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

Werner Forssmann at the presentation of the Nobel Prize in Medicine, 1956
Source: Forssmann family archive