Category Archives: History

June 20, 2012 · 10:39 am

Thomas Fogarty on the Process of Innovation and Angioplasty Pioneer Charles Dotter

Thomas Fogarty, MD

Thomas Fogarty, MD

Few people in the field of medical devices are as qualified to talk about innovation as is Dr. Thomas Fogarty, founder, chairman or board member of over 30 business and research companies and holder of over 130 patents.

So, as we are on the verge of a new age in medicine, incorporating SmartPhones, mobile technology and individualized medicine, courtesy of genomics, it is worthwhile remembering what “change” in this field entails — in the words of Dr. Fogarty: “The process of innovation always involves overthrowing the establishment” and that the people who drive this innovation have “always been perceived as crazy…and inappropriate.” Continue reading →

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March 13, 2012 · 12:55 am

Geoff Hartzler, Angioplasty Pioneer: In Memoriam

Geoffrey O. Hartzler, MD

Geoffrey O. Hartzler, MD

Anyone reading this, whose life has been saved by an emergency angioplasty, a procedure which stops a heart attack in its tracks, should pause for a moment in remembrance of and thanks to Dr. Geoffrey Hartzler, an early pioneer of angioplasty, who in 1980 first opened up a patient’s blocked coronary artery during an acute myocardial infarction (see video below.)  Dr. Hartzler passed away on Saturday, March 10, at age 65. I knew he had been fighting cancer, but I was saddened to read the news, first reported earlier today by Mike O’Riordan on theheart.org.

Geoff was truly a pioneer because, at the time, conventional wisdom argued against putting a balloon (this was pre-stent) into an artery that was causing an infarct. But he did, and he saved his patient’s heart and probably his life. Angioplasty has since become the “gold standard” for the emergency treatment of acute myocardial infarction. It has radically changed the prognosis for heart attack patients, virtually eliminating the devastating effects of an acute MI, if treatment is administered in time. Continue reading →

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January 27, 2012 · 5:15 pm

Stent Pioneer Gary Roubin Leaving Lenox Hill

Gary S. Roubin, MD, PhD, FSCAI

Gary S. Roubin, MD,
PhD, FSCAI

Interventional cardiology pioneer, Dr. Gary Roubin, is leaving Lenox Hill Heart & Vascular Institute in New York, where he has served as chair of Interventional Cardiac & Vascular Services for almost a decade.

Dr. Roubin confirmed his departure to Angioplasty.Org and stated that he is “moving on to bigger and more challenging projects.” Dr. Roubin’s departure was first reported yesterday by Shelley Wood of theheart.org.

Roubin told me that he feels he has “much more to contribute to the field of cardiovascular medicine”, although looking through his list of accomplishments, one might think that difficult to top because so many of those accomplishments start with the word “First“, as in: First abstract on balloon angioplasty in multivessel disease (with Andreas Gruentzig, inventor of the procedure); First balloon expandable coronary stent; First carotid bifurcation stent; First intracranial stent. Continue reading →

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October 5, 2011 · 12:10 pm

In Memoriam: J. Willis Hurst, MD

J. Willis Hurst, MD (1920-2011)

J. Willis Hurst, MD
(1920-2011)

Sad news out of Atlanta that Dr. J. Willis Hurst passed away on October 1 after a brief illness, a few weeks short of his 91st birthday. Hurst was a major figure in cardiology worldwide, having served as Professor and Chairman of the Department of Medicine at the Emory University School of Medicine for 30 years, and the author of “Hurst’s The Heart“, undisputedly the “bible” of cardiology, which is in its 13th edition and has been translated into more than five languages. It is considered to be the most widely used cardiology
textbook in the world. I know that every cardiologist’s office I’ve ever been in (and that’s a lot) has “Hurst’s The Heart” prominently displayed on the bookshelf. Continue reading →

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January 18, 2011 · 9:00 pm

From Angioplasty and Stents to Aortic Valve Replacement

Andreas Gruentzig34 years ago, Andreas Gruentzig performed the first coronary angioplasty. Rather than cutting open the chest, sawing through the sternum and sewing a bypass conduit (harvested from the leg or internal mammary artery) into the coronary artery, he elegantly threaded a balloon catheter to the blockage through a small incision in the femoral (groin) artery, in an awake patient. He then inflated the balloon, compressing the plaque against the arterial wall and opening the artery. The procedure was a total success and his first patient, Adolph Bachmann, is alive and well today! (see video clip: ” The 1st Angioplasty”.)

But more importantly than just inventing angioplasty, Gruentzig invented a method for treating patients non-surgically, from the inside-out! What Gruentzig said was: Continue reading →

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Filed under Clinical Trials / Studies, FDA, History, Innovators

February 12, 2010 · 4:30 pm

Clinton and Eisenhower: Presidents, Hearts, Stents and 55 Years

It’s a holiday concurrence: Valentine’s Day and President’s Day and American Heart Month — and former President Bill Clinton who got his heart fixed six years ago and just got a “tune-up”, is already back home. He was having discomfort, so yesterday morning he saw his cardiologist, he was wheeled into the cath lab — an hour later he had two stents opening up one of his original coronary arteries (not one of the bypass grafts which had closed completely) and this morning, less than 24 hours later, he was at home in Chappaqua and no doubt already on the phone and back to work. His prognosis: excellent — this incident should not affect or hinder him in any way.

Whatever your take on comparative effectiveness research, whether too many stents are used, etc., you have to admit it’s pretty amazing. The advances made in diagnosis, bypass surgery and interventional catheter-based techniques have revolutionized the treatment of coronary artery disease. Especially when you look back at how this illness used to be treated (or not).

Dr. William O'Neill

Dr. William O’Neill

Dr. William W. O’Neill, Professor & Executive Dean for Clinical Affairs, University of Miami, Division of Cardiology has a favorite lecture that he gives on this topic. He goes back to 1955 and describes how then President Eisenhower’s chest pains were first diagnosed as gastric upset and finally almost a day later an EKG showed he was in the midst of a massive heart attack. But there was nothing any doctor could do then, except give Ike morphine for the pain. The heart attack had to play itself out, Ike’s heart muscle was damaged and he was in the hospital for 7 weeks. He didn’t return to work for 3 months. (for you young folk, our Vice President at the time was Richard Nixon!). Ike did continue as President and, in fact, was re-elected to a second term (after all, he was THE hero of WWII). But without question, his ability to lead a fully active life was significantly compromised and ultimately, in 1967, he succumbed to heart disease.

The take-away from Bill Clinton’s episode is that even though his quadruple bypass surgery was successful, the natural history of coronary artery disease is that it will progress. Surgery, angioplasty, stents, medicine — none of these are cures, but they are interventions in this progression. Along with the medications, exercise, diet and smoking cessation, the natural history can be slowed down. Clinton, having experienced this pain previously, knew it was significant and did precisely the right thing: he saw his cardiologist.

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George W BushUpdated February 15, 2015: The above post from 2010 was written, of course, just after Bill Clinton received his stents. Since then, George W. Bush has also benefited from this technology, as well as Supreme Court Justices Kennedy and Ginsberg, Dick Cheney, and no doubt quite a few Senators and Representatives.

Updated June 12, 2018: Since this post, Dr. O’Neill has moved from Miami and is now the Director of the Center for Structural Heart Disease at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. He can be found on Twitter as @BillONeillMD.

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