Sones expected the man's heart to go into fibrillation and prepared to do an emergency open chest massage.

In 1947, Beck accomplished his first successful resuscitation of a 14-year-old boy using open chest massage and internal defibrillation with alternating current.

Anterolateral thoracotomy is performed upon the anterior chest wall; left anterolateral thoracotomy is the incision of choice for open chest massage, a critical maneuver in the management of traumatic cardiac arrest.