 On May 6, 1953 Gibbon performed his first successful operation using an extracorporeal circuit in an 18-year-old woman who had a large atrial septum defect with a large left-to-right shunt.It was Lillehei who one year later introduced the bubble oxygenator, simple and inexpensive, opening the doors of open heart surgery to all surgeons around the world.The first commercial minimized extracorporeal circulation was the CorX System from Cardiovention, a start-up company from the USA.