Instrumentation for cardiopulmonary bypass--past, present, and future.

Methods of extracorporeal circulation to permit intracardiac surgery still depend on the principles developed by John Gibbon in the early 1950s. This review traces Gibbon's early development, reviews the state of the art of instrumentation for extracorporeal circulation in the operating room today, and projects future changes in this instrumentation that will result in improvement in blood contact surfaces, automation and servo-regulation, and safety.