Philadelphia Weekly

A Philadelphia area doctor is distancing himself from a growing medical controversy.

Dr. James Fattu, past president of the Pennsylvania-Delaware chapter of the American Heart Association (AHA) and current Devon resident, says he did not, as has previously been claimed, "peer review" an article responsible for promoting the use of the Heimlich maneuver in drowning cases.

The Heimlich is well known as a procedure to prevent choking, but Dr. Henry Heimlich has also promoted its use in drowning scenarios for more than two decades.

Fattu's revelation came after an investigative report by the Cleveland Scene that dove headfirst into the drowning debate and the tumultuous world of Henry Heimlich.

Heimlich, now 84, has long been credited with inventing the Heimlich maneuver, an abdominal thrust that expels obstructions from the throats of choking victims. But longtime Heimlich associate Dr. Ed Patrick now says he helped invent the move, which he calls the "Patrick-Heimlich maneuver."

Heimlich's spokesperson Bob Kraft calls Patrick's statements "ludicrous."

Patrick, an old colleague of Fattu's, has also long been linked to Heimlich, a massive figure in Cincinnati. The pair even made a joint appearance before the National Institutes of Medicine in 1993 to argue for the use of the maneuver in drowning situations.

Kraft says the pair first met soon after Heimlich's famous maneuver was introduced in 1974. Heimlich's son Peter tells PW he remembers Patrick visiting the family's house for long conversations with his father in the early '70s.

The Scene article, by Thomas Francis, closely examines the drowning debate through an incident described by Patrick in a 1981 article he wrote for the now-defunct Emergency, a trade publication for emergency medical technicians.

Patrick wrote that he was in charge of the emergency department at Lima Memorial Hospital in Ohio on June 22, 1980, when a 2-year-old girl was rushed into the hospital after a drowning accident.

Patrick never names the girl, who he says had been submerged in fresh lake water for approximately 20 minutes. He says his treatment of her was also delayed by a 20-minute trip to the hospital. CPR had been ineffective, so he performed the Heimlich maneuver, clearing her airway of water.

"Neurological function improved during the first five days with the child obtaining purposeful movements ... and an apparent recognition of her parents," writes Patrick.

The only problem, according to the Scene, is that the girl never recovered at all. The paper identifies the drowning victim as Erin Snow--a girl who slipped into a coma the day of her accident and died four months later.

Patrick did not produce materials to corroborate his article to the Scene. He did tell PW that he'll soon post materials to back up his account of the Snow drowning at www.patrickinstitute.org. (He also faxed us his press release claiming he co-invented the Heimlich.)

Though Patrick's article was published in an obscure nonacademic trade journal, it was, if true, a landmark revelation.

In the mid-'80s Henry Heimlich used the case, published by his longtime friend, in debates over whether his procedure should be adopted by the medical community as the first response in resuscitating a drowning victim.

The medical establishment greeted this particular Heimlich maneuver with great skepticism.

Critics charged that Emergency was a non-peer-reviewed publication. Peer review requires that a neutral party with expertise in the subject at hand vouch for the article's credibility. As the controversy mounted, Patrick wrote in a letter to Dr. Joe Ornato, chairman of the American Heart Association's Special Situations Committee, that the article had in fact been peer reviewed by Dr. James Fattu.