Peter Safar

Verified Timeline

Lore & Background

Peter Safar was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1924 into a prominent Jewish medical family. His father, Karl Safar, was an ophthalmologist, and his mother, Vinca Safar-Landauer, was a pediatrician. Both were fired from their jobs under the Nuremberg Laws after the Anschluss, and Safar was not allowed to register for university. However, Safar ultimately escaped the Holocaust and graduated from the University of Vienna in 1948. He married Eva Kyzivat, of Czech descent, and moved from Vienna to Hartford, Connecticut, in 1949 for surgical training at Yale University. He completed training in anesthesiology at the University of Pennsylvania in 1952. In 1952 Safar worked in Lima, Peru, and founded the first academic anesthesiology department in the country. In 1954, he became chief of the department of anesthesiology at Baltimore City Hospital. Together with James Elam, he rediscovered the initial steps in CPR, including the head tilt and chin lift maneuver and mouth-to-mouth breathing. He influenced Norwegian doll maker Asmund Laerdal to design and manufacture CPR training mannequins called Resusci Anne. Beginning in 1956, Safar demonstrated in experiments on paralyzed human volunteers that rescuer exhaled-air mouth-to-mouth breathing could maintain satisfactory oxygen levels, and showed that even laypeople could effectively perform it. He combined the A (Airway) and B (Breathing) components with C (chest compressions) and wrote the book ABC of Resuscitation in 1957. This A-B-C system was later adopted by the American Heart Association, which promulgated standards for CPR in 1973. Safar established the United States' first intensive-care unit in 1958 at Baltimore City Hospital. In 1961, he went to the University of Pittsburgh, where he established its academic anesthesiology department and the world's first intensive-care medicine training program. In 1966, he was deeply moved by the death of his daughter, Elizabeth, at age 12 from an acute asthmatic crisis. He initiated the Freedom House Enterprise Ambulance Service in 1967, one of the first prehospital emergency medical services in the U.S., which employed young African Americans deemed 'unemployable.' In 1970, he co-founded the Society of Critical Care Medicine and served as its second president in 1971. In 1976, he co-founded the World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine (WADEM). He stepped down from the chairmanship of anesthesiology at the University of Pittsburgh and founded the International Resuscitation Research Center in 1979, dedicated to cardiopulmonary cerebral resuscitation (CPCR). With Nicholas Bircher he published a textbook on CPCR that became the international standard. In March 1989, he assembled the University of Pittsburgh Disaster Reanimatology Study Group (DRSG), which conducted the first international interdisciplinary disaster evaluation field survey after the earthquake in Armenia. These studies helped establish the 'Golden 24 Hours' of emergency response in disasters.

Reader's Guide

Peter Safar's significance rests on his foundational contributions to resuscitation medicine and emergency care. His development of the A-B-C system for CPR—airway, breathing, chest compressions—transformed layperson response to cardiac arrest and was adopted by the American Heart Association in 1973. He established the United States' first intensive-care unit in 1958 at Baltimore City Hospital and the world's first intensive-care medicine training program at the University of Pittsburgh in 1961. After his daughter Elizabeth died at age 12 from an acute asthmatic crisis in 1966, he initiated the Freedom House Enterprise Ambulance Service in 1967, one of the first prehospital emergency medical services in the U.S., which employed young African Americans deemed 'unemployable' and set standards for EMT education and ambulance design. Safar co-founded the Society of Critical Care Medicine in 1970 and the World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine in 1976. In 1979 he founded the International Resuscitation Research Center, dedicated to cardiopulmonary cerebral resuscitation. He was nominated three times for the Nobel Prize in Medicine and received Austria's Cross of Honor in 1999. His legacy endures through the Safar Center at the University of Pittsburgh and named lectures and awards from organizations like the European Resuscitation Council and Society of Critical Care Medicine.

Did You Know?

• Safar's parents, both physicians, were fired under the Nuremberg Laws after the Anschluss, and Safar was not allowed to register for university.
• He influenced Norwegian doll maker Asmund Laerdal to design and manufacture the CPR training mannequin Resusci Anne.
• Safar established the United States' first intensive-care unit in 1958 at Baltimore City Hospital.
• After his daughter Elizabeth died at age 12 from an acute asthmatic crisis in 1966, he initiated the Freedom House Enterprise Ambulance Service in 1967.
• He was nominated three times for the Nobel Prize in Medicine.