Balloon Catheter Inventor and Surgical Pioneer Passes Away

Thomas J. Fogarty, MD, FACS, a vascular surgeon and talented engineer who invented the balloon catheter, among several other transformative innovations, passed away on December 28 at 91 years old in Portola Valley, California. 

The balloon catheter, or Fogarty catheter, is a ubiquitous tool in modern surgery and interventional cardiology that changed both fields immensely as its use increased. Remarkably, Dr. Fogarty invented the balloon catheter in the early 1960s before he even completed medical school at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine in Ohio. 

While working as a scrub technician at Good Samaritan Hospital, he saw many patients die of blood clots and complications during blood clot surgery, which originally involved making large incisions in an artery and removing the clot with forceps. Nearly half of patients treated this way died or lost limbs. 

To address this issue, Dr. Fogarty experiments with a urethral catheter and balloon, which required a small incision to insert into an artery. By passing through the clot with the catheter, expanding the balloon with saline, and withdrawing the tool, clots were removed safely. After his mentors and colleagues successfully used the tool and spread its use, Dr. Fogarty patented the device in 1969. It remains the most widely used catheter for blood clot removal and is credited with saving millions of lives around the world.

In addition to the balloon catheter, Dr. Fogarty invented the Stent-Graft, which greatly improved treatment and survivability for abdominal aortic aneurysms by supporting the weakened vessel with an implant, rather than removing part of the artery. He also invented Fogarty surgical clips and clamps to occlude vessels during surgery and co-created the Hancock tissue heart valve—the world’s first tissue valve.

An ACS Fellow since 1973, Dr. Fogarty was a professor of cardiovascular surgery at Stanford University in California for 14 years before eventually founding Fogarty Innovation. This educational, non-profit organization on the campus of El Camino Hospital in Mountainview, California, focuses on advancing medical innovation and education and deploying advancements into clinical Care. He was honored with several prestigious awards for his contributions, including the Presidential National Medal of Technology and Innovation and the ACS Jacobson Innovation Award in 2001.

For his many advances in vascular surgery and subsequent developments from other innovators that followed his work, such as angioplasty, Dr. Fogarty is considered as a pioneer in minimally invasive surgery and a giant in surgery who has influenced the practice of nearly all modern practitioners.

Learn more about Dr. Fogarty’s life and career.