10 Fantastic Voyage

^fn1 This was not quite the first use of Sigwart’s device. The French cardiologist Jacques Puel had implanted a stent two months earlier, while Sigwart was still trying to obtain authorisation for its use from local health authorities.

^fn2 This breakthrough was anticipated almost thirty years earlier by the remarkable work of a Mexican surgeon, Victor Rubio-Alvarez, who in 1952 used a catheter with a sharp wire at its tip to slice through the fused leaflets of stenotic valves. His technique did not catch on, but it is arguable that the few procedures Rubio-Alvarez performed represent the dawn of interventional cardiology.