Figure. William Ganz, MD
William Ganz, MD, an internationally recognized leader and inventor in cardiovascular medicine, died in Los Angeles on Tuesday, 11 November 2009, at 90 years of age.
Dr. Ganz was born in Kosice, Czechoslovakia. He was educated at the Charles University School of Medicine in Prague. He was held during World War II in a Hungarian labor camp and subsequently survived in the Jewish underground in Budapest. He returned to Czechoslovakia, completed his medical studies at the Charles University, and started his career as a clinician investigator at the Institute for Circulatory Disorders in Prague, under the leadership of Professors Weber and Brod. His early studies with his colleague Dr. Fronek focused on blood flow measurements by the thermo-dilution method. In 1966, he escaped and emigrated with his family to the United States, arriving in Los Angeles with his wife Magda and two sons, Tomas and Peter. In 1966, Dr. Ganz joined the early cardiology faculty at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles.
In my opinion, Dr. Ganz's major contributions to cardiovascular medicine are as an inventor and teacher at all levels of cardiovascular medicine.
He and Dr. Jeremy Swan, then Chief of Cardiology at the Cedars-Sinai Hospital, developed the Swan-Ganz catheter, a flow-directed flexible catheter that can be positioned within the right atrium from a peripheral venous site; then, blood flow (or manual dexterity) helps direct it into the pulmonary artery, where a balloon at the end of the catheter is inflated, thereby blocking the proximal pulmonary artery. This procedure enables the retrograde measurement of pulmonary capillary wedge pressure, which is generally identical to left heart filling pressure. This catheter, developed in 1970, subsequently made the hemodynamic characterization of critically ill patients relatively easy, while providing the bedside insight needed for optimal management of patients with low blood pressures and those with fluid accumulation in their lungs. Used in thousands of patients worldwide, the Swan-Ganz catheter continues in use today. Dr. Ganz developed a new method for direct measurement of blood flow in human beings, which was subsequently incorporated into the Swan-Ganz catheter.
Starting in the late 1970s, Dr. Ganz collaborated with his colleagues at Cedars-Sinai to develop thrombolysis to treat acute myocardial infarction with clot-dissolving drugs. This “reperfusion therapy,” performed today, either with catheters or with drug-induced lysis, has become standard treatment for ST-segment-elevation myocardial infarctions throughout the world.
Dr. Ganz helped to educate countless numbers of cardiologists, internal medicine residents, and medical students at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. His influence in training, encouraging, and inspiring others in cardiovascular medicine extended worldwide, through his lectures at various institutions and at national and international meetings. I could always count on his advice and encouragement every time I had the pleasure of getting together with him, whether that meeting lasted only a few minutes or longer.
His energy, determination, and commitment to new developments in cardiovascular medicine knew no boundaries; nor did his encouragement of all those he believed were trying to contribute to the field. He was truly a special man—an inventor, educator, and builder—a human being who was enormously interested in others.
James T. Willerson, MD
President and Medical Director, Texas Heart Institute at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital, Houston