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CardioPulse Articles
Pioneers in cardiology
The unlocking of the coronary arteries: origins of angioplasty
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A short historical review of arterial dilatation from Dotter to the creative Gruentzig
Developments in the use of coronary catheters and the employment of angioplasty in the field of non-surgical vascularization owe much of its early success and indeed later developments to the young German cardiologist Andreas Gruentzig (1939–1985).
Andreas Gruentzig
From 1969 to 1970 Gruentzig spent time as a guest Fellow in the radiology department of the Aggertalclinic in Engelskirchen, Germany. It was there that the Head of Diagnostic Radiology, Eberhard Zeitler introduced Gruentzig to what was then known as the ‘Dotter technique’ so-named after its innovator Charles Theodore Dotter (1920–1985) a vascular radiologist. When operating in 1963 on a patient with renal artery stenosis, Dotter unintentionally recanalized an occluded right iliac artery. This was achieved by passing a percutaneous catheter retrograde through the blockage to achieve an abdominal aortogram. The therapeutic potential in the use of this procedure