Dr Heimlich Uses His Manoeuvre For First Time

The 96-year-old surgeon credited with developing the world-famous Heimlich manoeuvre has used the emergency technique for the first time to save a choking woman.

Dr Henry Heimlich went into action when an 87-year-old fellow resident at his retirement home in Cincinnati, Ohio, had a morsel of hamburger stuck in her throat.

He developed the life-saving technique in 1974 and has demonstrated it numerous times during exercises, but had never before used it in a real-life situation, he told the Cincinnati Inquirer.

"She was sitting in the chair and I turned her around so that her back would be exposed to me, put my arms around her and pressed, where I described it, on the abdomen, below the rib cage," Dr Heimlich told the Inquirer.

"And after three compressions this piece of meat came out and she just started breathing.

"I sort of felt wonderful about it, having saved that girl."

Retiree Patty Ris was lucky enough to be sitting next to Dr Heimlich at the Deupree House facility on Monday when the morsel of food became lodged in her windpipe.

"God put me in this seat next to you," Ms Ris wrote in a note to her saviour, the newspaper reported.

The retirement facility said one of its employees had also noticed Ms Ris in distress and was about to perform the technique on her.

But the employee decided not to upstage Dr Heimlich, allowing him to take control.