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The Birth, and Evolution, of Percutaneous Coronary Interventions: A Conversation With Patrick Serruys, MD, PhD.

Professor Patrick W. Serruys, MD, PhD, has been a Senior Interventional Cardiologist since 1977, Chief of Interventional Research since 1988, and Chief of Interventional Cardiology at the Thorax Center of Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, Emeritus, since April 1, 2014. He was the first Chair of Interventional Cardiology created by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). Currently, he is Professor of Cardiology in the Cardiovascular Science Division of the National Heart and Lung Institute (NHLI) of Imperial College London. Dr Serruys received his MD in 1972 from the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium, and his PhD in 1986 from the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Dr Serruys replies: In 1975 at a meeting in Frankfurt, a key opinion leader at that time, Professor Paul Lichtlen, Chief of Cardiology at Hannover, was describing during a keynote lecture a significant coronary lesion with a thin fibrous cap and a large atheromatous core; today, we call this a vulnerable plaque. He mentioned somewhat sarcastically that Dr Andreas Gruentzig had developed a procedure he believed could dilate that type of lesion. There was of course a lot of skepticism whether the procedure could be performed without major distal embolization. I went to see Andreas Gruentzig and to look at his poster. He had tied a ligature with catgut around the coronary artery of a dog, and he was using his balloon to open this artificial narrowing. Honestly, I could not foresee the future of this therapeutic approach. At that time, the Department of Cardiology in Zurich (where Gruentzig worked) was headed by 2 cardiologists, Hans Peter Krayenbuhl and Wilhelm Rutishauser. Krayenbuhl was not in favor of attempting the procedure, but Rutishauser was more enthusiastic about it. The famous Chief of Cardiovascular Surgery, Dr Ake Senning, told the Board of the …