Background
Beck, Claude Schaeffer was born on November 8, 1894 in Shamokin, Pennsylvania, United States. Son of Simon and Martha (Schaeffer) Beck.
Beck, Claude Schaeffer was born on November 8, 1894 in Shamokin, Pennsylvania, United States. Son of Simon and Martha (Schaeffer) Beck.
Bachelor of Arts, Franklin and Marshall College, 1916, Honorary Doctor of Science, 1937. Doctor of Medicine Johns Hopkins University, 1921.
He was the first American professor of cardiovascular surgery, from 1952 through 1965. Nominee for the Nobel Prize in Medicine, 1952. He received his medical degree in 1921 from Johns Hopkins, and in 1924 became a surgical resident at the Case Western Reserve University.
Beck stayed at Case Western till his death in 1971.
In the 1930s, Beck worked on the problem of how to restore circulation to the heart, by developing a technique to implant some pectoral muscle into the pericardium, which provided an additional source of circulation. The technique received great acclaim at the time, though was eventually replaced with more modern techniques.
He performed the first "Beck I" operation (cardiopericardiopexy) in 1935. The Beck II operation came about in the late 1940s, which created a vein graft between the aorta and coronary sinus.
In 1947, he performed the first successful defibrillation.
He had been operating on a 14-year-old boy with a congenital disorder, but towards the end of the surgery as the boy"s chest was being closed, the boy went into cardiac arrest. Beck applied the paddles of the device directly to the boy"s heart, and successfully brought the heart out of fibrillation. The boy made a full recovery.
Beck is also credited with describing the physiological basis for the signs of acute cardiac tamponade.
The medical signs classically associated with acute cardiac tamponade are collectively called Beck"s triad. He retired in 1965, and died of a stroke in 1971.
American College of Surgeons fellowship Member American Surgical Association, Association for Thoracic Surgeons, Society Clinical Surgery, American Society for Experimental Pathology, American Medical Association, American Heart Association, American Board of Surgeons, American Board Thoracic Surgeons (founders group), Eastern and Central surgical societies. Club: Halsted.
Married Ellen Manning, May 26, 1928. Children: Mary Ellen, Kathryn Schaeffer, Martha Annual.