Category Archives: Video

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 →

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 →

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 →