"Father of CPR” Dies at 79

Peter Safer, known for developing the widely used cardiopulmonary resuscitation technique (CPR) that has saved so many lives, died from cancer on August 3, 2003, at his home in Pittsburgh (PA, USA).

Peter Safer was born in Vienna (Austria) in 1924. After earning a degree in medicine at the University of Vienna, he went to the United States where he served as resident at Yale University. Later, he received anesthesiology training at the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, USA). He began his career at the National Cancer Institute of Peru (Lima), where he helped to establish an anesthesiology department. From then on, he became active in developing ways to improve emergency and critical care.

Dr. Safer is best known for developing the CPR technique, which combines closed-chest cardiac compression with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. In 1979, he founded the International Resuscitation Research Center at the University of Pittsburgh (PA, USA), dedicated to research into secondary injuries following traumatic brain injury, severe hemorrhage, and cardiopulmonary arrest. In 1994, the center was renamed in his honor as the Safer Center for Resuscitation Research. Dr. Safer was also a founding member of the American Heart Association's CPR Committee and the US National Research Council's Committee on Emergency Medical Services, where he helped to establish guidelines for these agencies and the organization of emergency units. He was also involved in ambulance design and the training of paramedics and emergency medical technicians.

In recent years, Dr. Safer made another valuable contribution to emergency care. He conducted research on the cooling of heart-attack victims and comatose patients whose hearts have been restarted, which he theorized would reduce brain damage. His research included animal experiments that resulted in early human trials. In July, 2003, research published in Circulation, the journal of the American Heart Association, confirmed the value of this practice.




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Circulation