Ã…ke Senning

Åke Senning ( born December 14, 1915 in Rättvik, Sweden, † July 21, 2000 in Zurich, Switzerland ) was a Swedish cardiac surgeon.

Life

Åke Senning was born the son of a veterinarian. He wanted to be an engineer, but his mother persuaded him to study medicine. After studying in Uppsala and Stockholm, he was laid in 1948 from the state exam. The surgical training he studied with Clarence Crafoord in 1948 in Sabbatsberg Hospital in Stockholm. Crafoord commissioned the development of a heart- lung machine. In 1954, Clarence Crafoord performed the first successful open heart surgery in Europe, Senning had contributed with his heart -lung machine plays a decisive role. In 1956 he followed his boss's Hospital, Karolinska Institutet, becoming head of the Experimental Surgery and at the same senior physician.

Together with the electrical engineer Rune Elmqvist developed Åke Senning in 1958 the first implantable pacemaker.

On April 16, 1961 Senning took over the management of the newly created A Surgical Clinic of the University Hospital Zurich. In the first nine months in office, 108 heart surgeries were performed, two years later, 264 and 937 in the last year in office in 1969, he carried out the first two heart transplants in Switzerland.

Åke Senning in 1979 was awarded the Ernst Jung Prize.