Post by David Abbasi, MD

His superiors said no… so he did it on himself😳 In 1929, a young German doctor named Werner Forssmann was convinced that a thin tube inserted through a vein could safely reach the human heart. Nobody would let him prove it. So he numbed his own arm with local anesthetic, inserted a catheter into a vein near his elbow, and threaded it through his own blood vessels toward his heart while standing alone in a hospital room. Then he walked down several flights of stairs with the catheter still inside him, went to the X-ray department, and had an image taken proving the tube had reached all the way into his heart. The medical world was horrified. His colleagues criticized him. His superiors were furious. And Werner Forssmann was ultimately fired for what he had done. Nearly three decades later in 1956, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the exact same experiment that almost ended his career. Today, millions of cardiac procedures every year from angiograms to stent placements rely on the principle he proved by threading a catheter into his own beating heart in a hospital basement in 1929. Sometimes the people who change medicine forever are the ones who refuse to ask for permission. ✅Follow @drdavidabbasi for More Daily Medical Content & Health Tips!🌴😷Schedule a consultation in Delray Beach! Visit www.primeorthocenter.com

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