ABSTRACT

Angioplasty Awakenings Contemporaneous with the initial explorations of fibrinolytic therapy in STEMI, Andreas Gruentzig was introducing the world to coronary balloon angioplasty (26,27). In the early days, the potential applications were not just uncertain-they were undiscovered. The ability to mechanically reperfuse an acutely occluded coronary artery was demonstrated by Peter Rentrop in 1979; he reestablished flow in a right coronary artery that abruptly occluded during diagnostic angiography by passing a coronary guidewire through the occlusion (28). The first primary PCI is generally attributed to Geoffrey Hartzler for a balloon angioplasty procedure performed in 1980 on a patient sustaining an acute inferior STEMI due to occlusion of a highgrade right coronary lesion that had been documented by diagnostic angiography the day before (29). The first published account appeared shortly thereafter, not as a scientific report, but as a first person account in a local newspaper, of a primary PCI performed by Robert “Jess” Peter at Duke University Medical Center on a columnist for the DurhamMorning Herald (30). Anecdotally, others began performing primary PCI on the occasional patient brought to the catheterization suite presenting with STEMI, not necessarily as an intentioned treatment but more as one of opportunity.