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October 27, 2005 It Was Twenty Years Ago Today... I had interviewed Andreas on video only a few weeks before, getting his "take" on the current state of angioplasty. This was all before the era of stents -- a device that changed the procedure significantly, virtually eliminating the problem of emergency bypass surgery. The video I was working on (for USCI -- does anyone remember them?) was going to be Andreas' answer to the expansion of angioplasty and its movement toward more and more complex cases, some say led by the "cowboys" of interventional cardiology. Parts of that interview can be viewed on his bio page here. I edited the video and sent him a copy via fedex. It arrived on his desk on Monday morning October 28th. That same day, Dr. Richard Schatz had scheduled an appointment with Andreas to show him his new device: the Palmaz-Schatz stent! You can see a video clip of Dr. Schatz discussing his excitement about presenting his stent to the "father of angioplasty". Unfortunately Gruentzig never got to see either the video or the stent. And ironically, over the following decade, the introduction of the stent expanded Gruentzig's procedure to the point where it overtook surgery as the treatment of choice for coronary artery disease. In September of 1985 I attended Andreas' last course at Emory and he gave tribute to the three great "fathers" of interventional cardiology: Charles Dotter, Mason Sones and Mel Judkins. Each had contributed to the process that culminated in angioplasty. All three had passed away in 1985. When Andreas paid tribute to them, the last thing anyone thought was that he would join them within a few weeks. |
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