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The History of Angioplasty
Gruentzig's Ambulatory Cardiac Catheterization
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One of Andreas Gruentzig's missions was to make the process of treating heart disease simpler and safer. In 1977, when he devised his method for opening up blocked arteries, the gold standard for viewing the coronary anatomy was cardiac catheterization.
In the 1950s, Mason Sones had perfected the technique of threading a catheter through the brachial artery in the elbow to the heart and injecting dye which would image the arterial system. The Sones technique, however, required a surgical cut-down to access the artery, thus requiring advanced skills for the operator. Subsequently Dr. Melvin Judkins developed an alternative access technique, using the femoral artery in the groin, which required only a Seldinger needle stick to advance the diagnostic catheter. He introduced his technique in 1967 and it is still utilized today.
Although the Judkins technique was simpler, at the time that Gruentzig was doing PTCA procedures, a diagnostic catheterization still required hours of compression on the groin and bed rest, in case of complications. So, one December afternoon in 1984, Andreas Gruentzig, following in the tradition of self-experimentation exemplified by Dr. Werner Forssmann, decided to be catheterized by one of his Fellows, and then attend the annual Christmas Party only hours later. His objective was to show that ambulatory cardiac catheterization was possible and preferable.
Following is a video interview with Hall "Whit" Whitworth, the Fellow who did Gruentzig's cath. The interview was conducted by me in Zurich, Switzerland, in 2007 on the 30th Anniversary of Coronary Angioplasty.
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| Andreas Gruentzig's Catheterization (1984)
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Reported by Burt Cohen, December 27, 2020 |
