who invented the heimlich maneuver

The Heimlich maneuver was invented by Dr. Henry J. Heimlich , an American thoracic surgeon.

Who invented it

• Dr. Henry Heimlich first described the abdominal‑thrust technique in 1974 as a way to clear a blocked airway in choking victims.

• At the time, he was director of surgery at the Jewish Hospital in Cincinnati , where he developed the maneuver through research on animals and basic physiology.

How it got its name

• The technique was first publicly promoted in an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in August 1974, which later coined the term “the Heimlich maneuver.”

• It quickly spread into first‑aid training, public‑safety posters, and media, becoming one of the most widely known emergency‑life‑saving techniques in the U.S.

Brief note on controversy

• Some later claimed shared or disputed credit (for example, Heimlich’s colleague Edward Patrick), but medical and historical sources still credit Henry Heimlich as the primary inventor of the modern abdominal‑thrust method.

So in short: Dr. Henry J. Heimlich invented the Heimlich maneuver in 1974 , and the technique bears his name today.