Henry Heimlich, the American doctor who invented the life-saving manoeuvre carrying his name, has died.

His son announced his death on Saturday, saying he passed away in the US city of Cincinnati aged 96.

Dr Heimlich died in hospital on Friday night following complications from a heart attack he suffered four days before, his family said.

His son, Phil Heimlich, said: “My father was a great man who saved many lives. He will be missed not only by his family but by all of humanity.”

Dr Heimlich was director of surgery at Jewish Hospital in Cincinnati when he the world-famous technique to dislodge airway obstructions in 1974, using it himself earlier this year to save a choking woman at his retirement home.

“When I used it, and she recovered quickly,” he told a local newspaper at the time. “It made me appreciate how wonderful it has been to be able to save all those lives.”

The chest surgeon told the Associated Press that thousands of deaths reported annually from choking prompted him to seek a solution in 1972.

Over the next two years, he led a team of researchers who tested the technique by putting a tube with a balloon at one end down an anaesthetised dog’s airway until it choked. Dr Heimlich then used the manoeuvre to force the dog to expel the obstruction.