The inventor of a life-saving technique to stop people dying of choking, Henry Heimlich, has died at the age of 96.

His eponymous manoeuvre, which involves forcing air upwards to free an object stuck in a person's airway, is said to have saved thousands of lives.

The first aid technique was developed and publicised by the thoracic surgeon in the 1970s.

He had come to the conclusion that back slaps - which were used previously to free objects trapped in the airway - did not work.

He had first worked in experimental medicine with the US Navy during World War Two, when he developed a treatment for what had been an incurable infection of the eyelids, trachoma.


Also during the war, his experience of being unable to save a young soldier who had been shot in the chest, made him later come up with an idea for a simple valve pump to drain blood from collapsed lungs.

The device is said to have saved thousands of lives when it was widely distributed to US troops in Vietnam.

How to help someone who is choking

But it was his development of the Heimlich manoeuvre that won him the most fame, after numerous stories appeared in newspapers across the US promoting its achievements in saving lives.

In 1975, the technique was given the endorsement of the American Medical Association and American Red Cross, resulting in fewer people dying from choking.

Earlier this year, it emerged that Dr Heimlich had successfully used his manoeuvre on a fellow resident at his retirement home.

He told an interviewer: "After three compressions, this piece of meat came out and she started breathing again. It felt wonderful, just having saved that girl."

The American Red Cross has since modified its recommendations to reinstate back blows for conscious patients, with a slightly different technique called abdominal thrusts to be used on those who are unconscious.

Dr Heimlich's son Phil said he died early on Saturday at the Christ Hospital in Cincinnati, after suffering a heart attack earlier in the week.