Charles T Dotter (1920-1985) who performed the first peripheral angioplasty is considered the father of interventional radiology. Dotter did his undergraduate studies at Duke and got his M.D. from Cornell in NYC. In 1952 he was appointed Professor and Chairman of Radiology at the University of Oregon and served for 33 years.
On January 16th 1964, Dotter performed the world's first percutaneous transluminal angioplasty on an 82-year old woman who refused amputation for a gangrenous foot. Dotter diagnosed a stenosis of the superficial femoral artery and with the use of co-axial catheters dilated the stenotic segment resulting in complete healing of the gangrenous ulcer! Inititialy the technique was received with skepticism in the United States but was readily accepted in Europe. The patient lived for another 2 1/2 years after this groundbreaking procedure. Dotter also described other interventional procedures such as the use of arterial stents and the use of transjugular biospies of the liver.
Dotter was a prolific researcher and published over 300 papers. His trainee Melvin Judkins did the seminal work in percutaneous coronay angiography. Dotter had many interests such as music, painting, photography, flying airplanes and climbing mountains.
In 1990, the Dotter Institute was established in his honor to further studies in the newly established subspecialties of Interventional Radiology, Interventional Cardiology and in other fields of medicine such as Interventional Neurosurgery.
