The inventor of the emergency choking technique, the Heimlich maneuver, used it for the first time to save a choking woman at his senior living facility.
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An employee at the Deupree House in Cincinnati, where Dr Heimlich lives, said the retired chest surgeon was in the room when an 87-year-old woman, Patty Ris, began choking.
According to WLKY, Heimlich was appreciative of the opportunity he’s had “to be able to save all those lives”.
Heimlich stepped behind her and performed his famous technique to dislodge the piece of food from her airway.
What’s the first thing you think of when someone around you starts choking? “God put me in that seat right next to you, Dr. Heimlich, so you could save my life”.
Mr Gaines told the Cincinatti Enquirer that he had been trained in the Heimlich manoeuver himself and had performed it at least twice in the two years he has worked at the Deupree House.
Countless lives have been saved by method of grabbing a choking victim from behind and applying heavy pressure to force air out of the body to push out objects obstructing their airway.
It’s hard to say how many people have been saved by the Heimlich maneuver since he invented it in 1974. Ris recovered quickly, and everyone returned to their meals. “So he did the Heimlich maneuver, but it’s the first time he’d ever done it on a patient”.
“Just the fact that a 96-year-old man could perform that is impressive”, Dr. Heimlich’s son, Phil, reportedly said.
“But”, Gaines said, pausing, “it is Dr. Heimlich”.
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“I couldn’t breath at all for a long time”, she said. “I knew it was working all over the world. I just felt a satisfaction”.
