[Balloon catheters image courtesy of Edwards Lifesciences]
Health practitioners today use balloon catheters in more than 300,000 procedures worldwide annually, with the devices estimated to have saved the lives and limbs of 20 million patients, according to Fogarty’s bio on the website of the Fogarty Institute for Innovation in Silicon Valley.
Since Fogarty’s innovation, minimally invasive surgical procedures have been developed to treat all kinds of medical conditions.
Chris Newmarker is the executive editor of WTWH Media life science's news websites and publications including MassDevice, Medical Design & Outsourcing and more. A professional journalist of 18 years, he is a veteran of UBM (now Informa) and The Associated Press whose career has taken him from Ohio to Virginia, New Jersey and, most recently, Minnesota. He’s covered a wide variety of subjects, but his focus over the past decade has been business and technology. He holds bachelor’s degrees in journalism and political science from Ohio State University. Connect with him on LinkedIn or email at cnewmarker@wtwhmedia.com.
Little credit to Dr. Frederic Foley who in the early 1930 some 30 years prior to Dr. Thomas Fogarty placed a balloon on an indwelling urethtal catheter. Confident any work by Dr. Fogarty probably involved a review of a Foley catheter as he began working on his catheter. Actually CR Bard began distributing the Foley catheter in the 1930 as well. Although Paul Raiche with the David Rubber company was awarded the Patent for the device the World would only know the product as The Foley… over 200million are utilized annually.
For a follow up article it would be interesting to track reimbursement policies and medical innovations. Since these policy can “push” innovation. At Poiesis this is why we launched the Duette catheter to reduce CAUTI events. CMS does not pay for never events so we designed a device that lowers rates 13:1 so far over the single balloon Foley. At $11,419 cost per infection it’s a game changer, only brought to the market due to reimbursement policies.
Appreciate the look back, alway good to know the past.
That’s a good point about Dr. Foley, Greg. Fogarty’s work, it seems, was such a game-changer because he figured out how to make balloon catheter work in the vasculature. Surgeons not having to dig around looking for a blood clot — it was a big deal. … That’s interesting about how reimbursement policies enabled the launch of your catheter. Think we’ll see more innovation like this, since CMS is driving toward alternative payment models post-Obamacare?
Certainly these are all game changers, although the first few were probably the biggest game changers ever. Certainly this is a relevant collection of major accomplishments. Thanks for publishing it!!