After medical school, Heimlich served with the
U.S. Navy in China during
World War II. In January 1945, as a member of the US Navy Reserve, Lieutenant (junior grade) Heimlich was assigned to Camp Four of the Sino-American Special Technical Cooperative Organization (SACO) located at Xamba, Suiyuan Province in northern China, on the southern edge of the
Gobi Desert. Officially he was the chief medical officer responsible for the well-being of American and Chinese military personnel at this camp, but in actuality he also took care of a wide array of medical issues for civilians in the small town. Camp Four received news of the war's end in late August 1945. During this time, Heimlich claimed he developed an innovative treatment for victims of
trachoma, a previously incurable bacterial infection of the eyelids that was causing blindness throughout Asia and the Middle East. According to Heimlich, his approach – a mixture of an antibiotic ground into a base of shaving cream – proved effective, and it was used successfully on patients.
Heimlich valve In 1962, Heimlich invented the chest drainage flutter valve (also called the Heimlich valve), and was granted a patent for the device in 1969. He said his inspiration came from seeing a Chinese soldier die from a bullet wound to the chest during
World War II, a claim that was disputed by Frederick Webster, Heimlich's medical assistant in China. The design of the valve allows air and blood to drain from the chest cavity in order to allow a
collapsed lung to re-expand. The invention was credited with saving the lives of hundreds of American soldiers in the
Vietnam War.
Heimlich maneuver On June 1, 1974, Heimlich first published his views about the first-aid maneuver that would bear his name in an informal article, "Pop Goes the Cafe Coronary", in the magazine
Emergency Medicine. On June 11, Arthur Snider, science columnist for the
Chicago Daily News wrote about Dr. Heimlich's findings, opening with the sentence, "A leading surgeon invites the public to try a method he has developed for forcing out food stuck in the windpipe of persons choking to death," in a story reprinted nationwide. On June 19, 1974, the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that retired restaurant owner Isaac Piha, who had read the Snider article in the Seattle paper, used the procedure to rescue a choking victim, Irene Bogachus, in
Bellevue, Washington, a story reprinted in other newspapers. An editorial followed in the August 12 issue of
The Journal of the American Medical Association, which was the first to refer to the procedure as "the Heimlich Maneuver". From 1976 to 1985, the choking-rescue guidelines of the
American Heart Association and of the
American Red Cross taught rescuers to first perform a series of back blows to remove the foreign body airway obstruction. If back blows failed, then rescuers learned to proceed with the Heimlich maneuver (aka "abdominal thrusts"). After a July 1985 American Heart Association conference, back blows were removed from choking-rescue guidelines. From 1986 to 2005, the published guidelines of the American Heart Association and the American Red Cross recommended only the Heimlich maneuver as the treatment for choking; the
National Institutes of Health still does apply it for conscious persons over one year of age, as does the
National Safety Council. The 2005 choking-rescue guidelines published by the American Heart Association called the procedure "abdominal thrusts". The new guidelines stated that chest thrusts and back blows may also deal with choking effectively. In 2005, the American Red Cross "downgraded" the use of the Heimlich maneuver, essentially returning to the pre-1986 guidelines. For conscious victims, the new guidelines (nicknamed "the five and five"), recommend first applying five back blows; if this method fails to remove the airway obstruction, rescuers are to then apply five abdominal thrusts. For unconscious victims, the new guidelines recommend chest thrusts, a method first recommended in a 1976 study by Charles Guildner, with results duplicated in a study by Audun Langhelle in 2000. The 2006 guidelines eliminated the phrase "Heimlich maneuver" and replaced it with "abdominal thrust". Allegations of case fraud have dogged Heimlich's promotion of abdominal thrusts as a treatment for drowning. The 2005 drowning rescue guidelines of the American Heart Association did not include citations of Heimlich's work and warned against using the Heimlich maneuver for drowning rescue as unproven and dangerous, due to its risk of vomiting leading to
aspiration. He stated, "I would like to get proper credit for what I've done ... but I'm not hyper about it." Heimlich claimed to have used his namesake maneuver to rescue a choking victim for the first time on May 23, 2016, when he was age 96, reportedly saving the life of a fellow resident of his
senior living community, Patty Ris. However, in 2003, he told the BBC that he had used it for the first time on a man choking in a restaurant. Heimlich claimed his namesake treatment may have saved the lives of more than 50,000 people. However, according to Michael Sayre in 2005, "Despite widespread education on the use of the Heimlich maneuver and other techniques for treatment of acute airway obstruction, the death rate remains stable."
Malariotherapy From the early 1980s, Heimlich advocated
malariotherapy, the deliberate infection of a person with benign
malaria in order to treat ailments such as cancer,
Lyme disease and (more ) HIV. the treatments were unsuccessful, and attracted criticism as both scientifically unsound and dangerous. The United States
Food and Drug Administration and
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have rejected malariotherapy and, along with health professionals and advocates for human rights, consider the practice "atrocious". The Heimlich Institute, a subsidiary of Deaconess Associations of Cincinnati, conducted malariotherapy trials in
Ethiopia, though the Ethiopian Ministry of Health was unaware of the activity. Heimlich stated that his initial trials with seven subjects produced positive results, but refused to provide details. Based on such studies,
Paul Farmer described the idea of treating HIV with malaria by stating "it seems improbable. The places where malaria takes its biggest toll are precisely those in which HIV reaps its grim harvest". ==Personal life==