When Detroit Muscle Powered a Breakthrough in Heart Surgery<br />Mr. Rippingille and two other G. M.<br />employees monitored the operation of the device, while Dr. Dodrill and a surgical team successfully repaired Mr. Opitek’s mitral heart valve.<br />The combined efforts of Harper doctors and G. M.<br />engineers would produce a miraculous machine — a mechanical device that would temporarily replace Mr. Opitek’s heart.<br />The operation was performed by a team led by Dr. Forest D. Dodrill, who had approached G. M.<br />about a partnership after reasoning that pumping blood would be much like pumping fuel.<br />“We have pumped oil, gasoline, water and other fluids one way or another in our business,” Mr. Rippingille said in a 1952 G. M.<br />publication, “The Fateful Heart,” that was cited by Dr. Stephenson.<br />Dr. Cooksey introduced Dr. Dodrill to Mr. Wilson, and the two men met to discuss how a mechanical heart might work.<br />“Dodrill took a big step that at least demonstrated open-heart surgery could be done while circulating blood with a pump,” said Dr. Larry W. Stephenson,<br />a professor of surgery at Wayne State University who documented the operation at length in a 2002 article for the Journal of Cardiac Surgery.
