Swiss surgeon who developed angioplasty in 1977. This procedure, performed with great regularity today, inserts a small catheter containing a balloon into blocked coronary arteries. The balloon, when inflated, compresses the plaque against the arterial...

Andreas R. Gruentzig, 1939–1985, was a German radiologist who first developed successful balloon angioplasty for expanding lumens of narrowed arteries. His first successful coronary angioplasty treatment on a human was performed in 1977, in Zurich,...