historical review

In 1953 the invention of the heart-lung machine made open heart surgery possible. Since then many technical developments made new treatment options possible and successful.

The arterial filter (AF), nowadays standard in many countries, was developed 1955 in order to diminish the huge number of air and other emboli caused by the bubble oxygenators, so that these emboli could not get from the extracorporeal circuit (ECC) into the patient.

Since the development of the arterial filter, the DBT Dynamic Bubble Trap is the most effective development to significantly reduce the number of air microbubbles larger than 10 µm in the arterial line of the extracorporeal circulation.