By: Donald V. Watkins
Copyrighted and Published on March 6, 2024
If you are one of the 200,000 heart patients each year who received an implantable cardioverter defibrillator to detect irregular heart beats and automatically correct them, you must see this New Explorers video. A&E Network/PBS first aired the documentary below nationwide in 1993.
Television producer and news anchor Bill Kurtis narrates the inspirational story of the first defibrillator implanted in a human patient in 1980. The operation was performed by Dr. Levi Watkins, Jr., MD, an Alabama native and renown Johns Hopkins Medical Center heart surgeon.
In 1962, Dr. Watkins was the co-valedictorian of his graduating class at Alabama State Laboratory High School (an honor he shared with his best friend for life, Dr. Norman W. Walton, III, a renowned dermatologist). In 1966, Watkins graduated from Tennessee State University (TSU) with a 3.7 GPA on a 4.0 grading system. He was also the student government president at TSU.
During his senior year at TSU, Watkins applied for admission to the University of Alabama School of Medicine. He was denied entry into the University's medical school solely because of his race.
In 1966, Dr. Watkins became the first Black medical student admitted to Vanderbilt Medical School, where he graduated with honors in 1970.
After graduation from Vanderbilt, Watkins began his medical residency at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. There, he became chief resident of cardiac surgery, acting as the first Black chief resident at the university. Watkins eventually became Associate Dean at Johns Hopkins Medical School.
In 1973, Dr. Watkins left Johns Hopkins for Harvard University where he researched the use of angiotensin blockers in cases of congestive heart failure. Angiotensin blockers were created in order to avoid the side effects of ACE inhibitors, which were previously the drug of choice for lowering blood pressure and treating congestive heart failure. Watkins’ research work at Harvard contributed to the safety and efficiency of the drug.
Dr. Watkins returned to Johns Hopkins in 1975 to continue the pioneering medical research on the implantable defibrillator that had been started by Drs. Michel Mirowski, Morton Mower, and William Staewen.
This New Explorers documentary chronicles Watkins’ co-development and successful implantation of the first cardioverter defibrillator in a human patient.
Dr. Watkins died on April 11, 2015, but a piece of him lives on in the estimated 3 million patients around the world who have defibrillators implanted in their bodies to keep their hearts beating in a regular rhythm.