Dr. William Ganz; cardiologist co-invented safer catheter; at 90
LOS ANGELES - Dr. William Ganz, who survived a Nazi labor camp to become an internationally recognized cardiologist, died Tuesday night of natural causes. He was 90.
Dr. Ganz was co-inventor of the Swan-Ganz catheter for monitoring conditions in the heart and was one of the first physicians to use clot-busting enzymes to open blocked arteries that cause heart attacks.
He “changed the life of millions through his significant contributions to medicine,’’ said his colleague, Dr. P.K. Shah, director of the cardiology division at Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute. “But he never lost sight of the importance of family and friends. He has left us a rich and enviable legacy.’’
Before Dr. Ganz’s work, examinations of the heart were performed by inserting a relatively stiff plastic catheter into a large artery, such as in the groin, and guiding it to the heart using a fluoroscope, a time-consuming and occasionally dangerous process.
In 1970, Dr. Ganz and H.J.C. “Jeremy’’ Swan of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles developed the idea of placing an inflatable balloon at the tip of a more flexible catheter. Once inserted into the artery, pressure from blood flowing toward the heart pushed it along, directing it to the heart. The procedure was faster and safer.
The balloon also wedged the device into narrow blood vessels near the heart to allow blood pressure to be measured.
Dr. Ganz later said he got the idea by watching sailboats. He also developed devices to attach to the catheters to measure blood pressure and other characteristics of blood flow. The catheter and the devices are now used by physicians worldwide.
Dr. Ganz also played a key role in the development of thrombolysis, in which enzymes are injected into the bloodstream to break down clots that block the vessels. He demonstrated that such enzymes would work in animals and, in 1982 with Shah, conducted the first clinical trials in humans. That technique also is used worldwide, although it has been supplanted in many cases by balloon angioplasty.
William Ganz was born in 1919 in Kosice, in what is now the Republic of Slovakia.
He leaves his sons, Dr. Tomas Ganz, a pulmonologist at the University of California at Los Angeles, and Dr. Peter Ganz, a cardiologist at Harvard Medical School, and five grandchildren.