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(Circulation. 2002;106:752.)
© 2002 American Heart Association, Inc.

Current Perspective

The Coronary Angiogram and Its Seminal Contributions to Cardiovascular Medicine Over Five Decades

Thomas J. Ryan, MD

From Evans Department of Medicine, Section of Cardiology, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, Mass.

Correspondence to Thomas J. Ryan, MD, Professor of Medicine, Chief of Cardiology (Emeritus), and Senior Consultant in Cardiology, Section of Cardiology, Boston Medical Center, 88 East Newton St, Boston, MA 02118. E-mail thomas.ryan@bmc.org

Key Words: angiography • coronary disease • diagnosis • imaging

An extract of the first 250 words of the full text is provided, because this article has no abstract.

	Introduction

 
The selective injection of contrast media into the right coronary artery of a middle-aged male by Dr F. Mason Sones, Jr, on October 30, 1958 (Figure 1) introduced a new era in cardiovascular medicine that was to revolutionize our understanding and management of the cardiac patient for the remainder of the twentieth century.^1,2 As the first reliable in vivo marker for the presence of obstructing coronary lesions, the coronary angiogram not only provided objective evidence to support or refute the clinical diagnosis of angina pectoris but, quite importantly, led to our first studies of the natural history of patients with coronary artery disease (CAD). The purpose of this article is to underscore the crucial role this particular technology played in contributing to the epochal events and discoveries that have characterized the march of progress in the field of cardiology over the past 50 years.

View larger version (129K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Figure 1. Cine frame from the first selective coronary arteriogram taken by F. Mason Sones, MD, on October 30, 1958. Reprinted with permission from J Am Coll Cardiol. 1998;31:89B–96B.

	Historical Setting

 
Sones’ decision to undertake selective visualization of the coronary artery in his patient undergoing catheterization to evaluate mitral regurgitation was, in some measure, the result of a serendipitous event that occurred in his laboratory 2 days earlier. This has been described in detail elsewhere by Dr Willis Hurst³ and entailed a power injection of 40 to 50 cc of contrast media that was intended to be delivered into the aortic root of a patient with . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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