Historical
Cardiology has developed as one of its main sub-areas from general internal medicine. Most of the diagnostic and interventional methods were not developed until the 20th century. The ECG, for example, was developed at the turn of the century, the first heart operation having taken place only a few years earlier.
Already in 1929 Werner Forßmann demonstrated the possibility of catheter examinations in a self-experiment. Major surgical interventions only became possible with the development of the heart–lung machine in 1953. In the following three decades, the vast majority of the essential procedures, equipment and drugs that characterize today’s cardiology were developed. Interventional catheter interventions, for example, have only become widely accepted in the last two decades.
