Category Archives: Peripheral Artery Disease (PAD)

Back to the Future: Drug-Eluting Angioplasty Balloons, Dissolving Stents, FFR and More

Back to the FutureI added a new category “tag” to the stent blog today: “Back to the Future.” And I hereby declare this to be an internet meme, even if it’s only a meme on this site!

I added this category because every TCT or ACC or AHA or ISET or ESC or EuroPCR meeting that I cover, I am struck by the fact that the newest, latest, greatest innovations are all ideas that were present at the genesis of this field of interventional cardiology. Continue reading

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Filed under Back to the Future, Drug-Eluting Stents, FFR, History, Meetings & Conferences, Peripheral Artery Disease (PAD), Video

Angioplasty: From the Legs to the Heart and Back to the Legs

Charles Dotter, MD in LIFE Magazine

Charles Dotter, MD in LIFE Magazine, August 1964

Angioplasty! A word at the center of the recent TCT meeting in Miami, attended by 12,000 healthcare professionals. A word coined half-a-century ago by Dr. Charles Dotter, a radiologist who practiced at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, Oregon.

Dotter’s idea was simple: to open up arterial blockages in the legs from the inside out: by snaking a catheter down the circulatory system to the blockage, instead of cutting through the various layers of body tissue to repair the artery through open surgery. Continue reading

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Filed under History, Innovators, Meetings & Conferences, Peripheral Artery Disease (PAD), Video