Meet the Brilliant Minds Behind the First ICD

Mirowski: From WWII to Sinai Hospital The story of how Mieczyslaw "Michel" Mirowski ended up in America where he conceived the idea of an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) is almost as incredible as the invention itself, if not more so. Mirowski was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1924. He grew up among the large Jewish population of Warsaw at that time, but when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, 15-year-old Mirowski left his family and fled to Russia with a friend. He would be the only member of his family to survive World War II, according to a 2010 article in the BC Medical Journal. Mirowski spent the following five years of the war in the Soviet Union, fleeing the advancing Germans and evading Russian authorities. After the war ended, Mirowski briefly returned to Poland and began medical school in Gdansk before leaving to pursue his medical education in Western Europe. He eventually enter­ed medical school in Lyon, France, in 1947. After graduating from medical school in 1954, he initially worked in Tel Aviv, Israel and then pursued further training in Mexico City, Baltimore, and Staten Island. He returned to Israel in 1963 to set up a private practice in a small community hospital. It was there that he met his mentor, Harry Heller, MD, who died from ventricular tachycardia. Heller's death became the inspiration for Mirowski's...
Source: MDDI - Category: Medical Devices Authors: Tags: Implants Source Type: news