Viking Björk

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Viking Olov Björk (3 December 1918, Sunnansjö, Dalarna – 18 February 2009) was a Swedish cardiac surgeon.

In 1968, he collaborated with American engineer Donald Shiley to develop the Björk–Shiley valve, a mechanical prosthetic heart valve. It was the first "tilting disc valve", used to replace the aortic or mitral valve. Many modifications followed, including the convexo-concave valve. The convexo-concave valve had defects in form of strut fractures. Therefore, the monostrut valve was introduced to prevent outflow strut fractures.^[1]

The Bjork–Shiley valve was manufactured by Pfizer after they bought the Shiley company in 1979. In 1980 Björk wrote to Pfizer threatening to publish cases of valve failures — often fatal to the patients — unless corrective action was taken. This eventually led to long lawsuit that involved the recall of all existing valves and Pfizer allocating up to US$20 million to pay compensation.^{[citation needed]}

Björk wrote his dissertation in 1948, titled "Brain perfusion in dogs with artificially oxygenated blood".^[2]

Björk died on 18 February 2009 in Stockholm.^[3][4]

References[]

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