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(Circulation. 2000;102:IV-81.)
© 2000 American Heart Association, Inc.

Special Anniversary Issue

Interventional Treatment of Coronary Heart Disease and Peripheral Vascular Disease

Spencer B. King, III, MD; Bernhard Meier, MD

Correspondence to Bernhard Meier, MD, Cardiology, Swiss Cardiovascular Center Bern, University Hospital, CH-3010 Bern, Switzerland. E-mail bernhard.meier@insel.ch

Key Words: angioplasty • coronary disease • balloon • revascularization • stents

In 1950, the ground for catheter-based interventions in peripheral or coronary arteries was laid (Table), but no activity had started.¹

View this table: [in this window] [in a new window]   Table 1. Milestones for Human Cardiovascular Catheterizations up to 1950

Diagnostic Catheter Procedures

In 1958, Mason Sones and his colleagues developed selective coronary angiography and published it as an abstract in Circulation.² As a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic, he performed angiography of the aortic root in a patient with valvular heart disease. Looking directly into the x-ray beam, as was customary in the era before image intensifiers coupled to television systems (Figure 1), Sones recognized that the catheter had inadvertently slipped into the right coronary artery. The patient had transient asystole but no ventricular fibrillation. The high-quality picture of the right coronary artery obtained ushered in the era of selective coronary angiography. Sones subsequently refined this technique for routine use through a cut-down of the brachial artery. In parallel, Kurt Amplatz³ and Melvin Judkins⁴ further developed the technique using a femoral approach made possible by the Seldinger technique, introduced in 1953.⁵

View larger version (144K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Figure 1. Figure 1. F. Mason Sones (1919–1985) in the catheterization laboratory in Cleveland.

Precoronary Therapeutic Catheter Interventions

The turn from purely diagnostic procedures to therapeutic interventions was launched in 1964 by Charles Dotter.⁶ In collaboration with Judkins at the University of Oregon in Portland, the vascular radiologist Dotter used coaxial catheters of increasing diameters to "bougie" narrowed leg arteries in patients with peripheral artery disease, analogous to the Benique technique for the urethra of 1846. The method failed to reach general acceptance, for several . . . [Full Text of this Article]