Ake Senning

Ake Senning (1915-2000) was a Swedish cardiac surgeon who spent much of his career at the University Hospital of Zurich, where he worked from 1961 until his retirement in 1985. In 1958, working with electrical engineer Rune Elmqvist, he implanted the world first fully implantable cardiac pacemaker in patient Arne Larsson, whose device required repeated replacement over more than four decades. Senning developed the Senning procedure, an atrial switch operation introduced in 1959 for correcting transposition of the great vessels, a serious congenital heart defect, and worked on heart-lung machine technology, including a roller oxygenator design that helped reduce surgical mortality rates dramatically during his tenure at Zurich. He also performed Switzerland first heart transplantations, in 1969.