Edward Diethrich

Edward "Ted" B. Diethrich, MD (August 6, 1935 - February 23, 2017) was an American cardiovascular surgeon, author, and innovator.

He was known for his innovations in the field of vascular surgery as well as for founding the Arizona Heart Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona.

Early life and education

Diethrich was born in Hillsdale, Michigan in 1935. He obtained his undergraduate (1956) and medical (1960) degrees from the University of Michigan. He then completed his surgical residency at St. Joseph's Mercy Hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. He received his thoracic and cardiovascular surgery training at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, where he later worked with surgeon Michael DeBakey in the development of human heart transplantation.

Career

After moving to Arizona, Diethrich founded the Arizona Heart Institute in 1971, the nation's first freestanding clinic solely devoted to cardiac and vascular diseases. This expanded into the nation's first outpatient cardiac catheterization laboratory in 1979 and the world's first school of cardiac ultrasound in 1982.

Diethrich later founded the Arizona Heart Hospital in 1998 and served as its medical director and Chief of Cardiovascular and Endovascular Surgery from 1998 to 2010. In 1996 Diethrich performed the first endovascular aneurysm repair (EVAR) for ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm. In 1997 he co-founded, ENDOLOGIX based on the stent graft research and patents of Myles Douglas, MD a Cardiovascular Surgeon working on the AHI staff. Another first was the stent graft treatment of a Thoracic Aortic Dissection in 1997. Over the course of his career, he co-authored nearly 400 papers and trained over a thousand surgeons and other specialists in cardiovascular surgery and endovascular techniques, including several leaders in the fields of vascular and cardiac surgery, including Venkatesh Ramaiah, who succeeded him in 2010 as medical director of Abrazo Arizona Heart.

Diethrich achieved national recognition for performing surgery on live television, including on then-Senator Barry Goldwater in 1982. Later, after he developed glioma, a particularly lethal form of brain tumor, as a result of his frequent exposure to radiation, he worked with the Organization for Occupational Radiation Safety in Interventional Fluoroscopy, to be the model for a documentary about the ill effects that radiation can have on the human body.

Recognition

Diethrich received awards and recognition including the Frederick A. Coller Award, the presidency of the Denton A. Cooley Cardiovascular Surgical Society, the Medal for Innovation in Vascular Surgery from the Society for Vascular Surgery, and the establishment by his trainees of the Edward B. Diethrich Vascular Surgical Society.

Death

In his later years, Diethrich became an advocate for the dangers of radiation exposure incurred during his work. He passed away in 2017 at age 81 due to complications from a brain tumor.