Biography

William Wallace Lumpkin Glenn the son of a country doctor and an attorney was educated at Sewanee Military Academy, the University of South Carolina and received the MD degree from Jefferson Medical School in 1938. He was a surgical resident at the Massachusetts General Hospital and later served as a surgeon in the United States Army Medical Corps in Europe. In 1948 he joined Yale University School of Medicine as Chief of Cardiovascular Surgery, and in 1965 became its Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery. With this he became a member of the founding generation of cardiac surgeons. His creative and pioneering efforts earned him many honors during his lifetime. Among them was his election from 1979-1981 as the first surgeon to be President of the American Heart Association, which named a lectureship in his honor in 1989. In 1990 the North American Society of Pacing and Electrophysiology (NASPE) named him a Pioneer in Cardiac Pacing and Electrophysiology. In 1963 he organized a Symposium on Cardiac Pacing under the auspices of the New York Academy of Sciences, which resulted in a published collection of papers which remains a staple of the early history of the field. This symposium was later recognized as the first in the series of World Symposia of Cardiac Pacing and Electrophysiology. He was the founding editor of Glenn's "Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery", now in its Sixth Edition, an international standard reference.

In 1950 he and William H. Sewell developed a rudimentary artificial heart lung machine with home made elements and components from an Erector set with which they were able to bypass the animal heart in the experimental laboratory. The bypass device is now in the Smithsonian museum collection. 1954 he popularized the superior vena cava to pulmonary artery shunt to bypass the right side of the heart, a procedure widely designated as the Glenn Operation, though characteristically, he would recall others who, he emphasized, had preceded him in performing the procedure. Later during the 1950s he began an effort which would occupy his research interests for the remainder of his career, the use of radio-frequency (RF) transmission of energy for stimulation of a variety of body structures. Working with physiologist Alexander Mauro and Lawrence Eisenberg, a technique was developed to implant a subcutaneous receiver to receive energy from a transmitter pulse generator carried outside the body, across the intact skin. This technique allowed separation of internal and external components solving twin problems by allowing replacement of the battery, always a consumable element, and of infection, when stimulating leads traverse the skin. The technique was initially used for cardiac pacing, with the first RF pacemaker implanted successfully January 29, 1959. A RF pacemaker system was eventually commercialized but was eventually replaced by wholly implantable systems with a self contained battery.

He continued the development of RF techniques for stimulation of the gastrointestinal tract, carotid sinus, bladder and most importantly the phrenic nerves to assist respiration (electrophrenic respiration). At a time when the RF receiver was far smaller than a fully implantable pacemaker it was especially useful for pacing in children, a topic in which he maintained a long term interest. He developed electrodes which were capable of prolonged phrenic nerve stimulation without losing effectiveness and surgical techniques for electrode implantation intrathoracically and within the neck without irreversibly damaging the phrenic nerves. Patients have been maintained for many years with RF ventilation. All present techniques of electrophrenic stimulation are largely descended from the research of Glenn and his colleagues prominent among whom were Wade G. Holcomb and James F. Hogan.

Courtesy of Yale University Public Relations

Interview Excerpts

Early development of the radiofrequency pacemaker (7:23 seconds)

The Glenn Operation (caval-pulmonary artery shunt) (4:41 seconds)

Excerpted from this interview:
Interviewer: Seymour Furman, MD
Date: August 25^th, 2000
Place: New Haven, Connecticut, USA
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