Angioplasty's 40th anniversary observed

OHSU's Dotter Interventional Institute recently marked the 40th anniversary of Charles Dotter's invention of angioplasty, the groundbreaking procedure that is now performed hundreds of thousands of times a year to open up blocked arteries.

About 100 people attended a ceremony just down the hall from the OHSU Hospital radiology suite where Charles Dotter, M.D., performed the world's first percutaneous transluminal angioplasty in 1964.

Considered the father of interventional radiology, Dotter pioneered the concept of surgery without a scalpel, declaring in 1963 that "the angiographic catheter can be more than a tool for passive means for diagnostic observations: used with imagination, it can become an important surgical instrument."

At a reception following the ceremony, Frederick Keller, M.D., professor of surgery and interventional radiology, SM, and director of the Dotter Institute, said Dotter, who died in 1985, would have been happy to see that angioplasty and many other methods he conceived have become routine medical procedures - and that his legacy lives on at OHSU.

"Dedicated multidisciplinary physicians from such diverse specialties as neurosurgery, pulmonology, urology, orthopaedic surgery, neurology, pediatric cardiology, and diagnostic and interventional radiology, to name a few, provide the highest quality patient care to OHSU patients and patients from the state of Oregon and throughout the Northwest," he said. "Their dedicated work is aimed toward moving the specialty of interventional medicine forward by improving upon existing interventional devices and procedures and developing new ones. Yes, Charles would have been very happy."