Viking Bjork

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Viking Bjork (b. 1919) is a Swedish cardiac surgeon.

In 1968 he collaborated with American engineer Donald Shiley to develop the first "monostrut tilting disc valve" used to replace the aortic or mitral valve.

The Bjork-Shiley heart valve was manufactured by Pfizer after they bought the Shiley company in 1979. In 1980 Dr. Bjork 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.