Medtronic taps British interventional cardiology pioneer

December 8, 2009 by MassDevice staff

Medtronic Inc. (NYSE:MDT) tapped veteran British interventional cardiologist Martin Rothman to lead a portion of its vascular business.

The Minneapolis medical device monolith said Rothman will be vice president of medical affairs for its Santa Rosa, Calif.-based coronary and peripheral vascular business, effective Jan. 4. He spent the last 37 years in clinical practice at the London Chest Hospital, where he directed cardiac research and development for the past 10 years.

Rothman is no stranger to the medical device industry. Aside from being an investigator in trials of Medtronic's Endeavor stent, in 1985 he founded Intravascular Research Ltd., which developed phased array ultrasound devices to provide real-time views of the interior of coronary arteries. That company was sold to Jomed NV in May, 2000.

And it's not the first time Rothman has called Northern California home. He was a fellow at Stanford Medical School in 1980, where he was first exposed to the nascent world of interventional cardiology.

"I was working alongside John Simpson, MD, PhD, the professor of medicine at Stanford, who was doing some of the first angioplasties in the world, and this brought me a new perspective," Rothman told Circulation, the Journal of the American Heart Assn. "In 1980, some physicians — including me — thought that angioplasty was bonkers. But [Simpson] was an entrepreneur, he saw an idea when it was at its earliest stage and decided the technique then being used was not the best way to proceed. He made the stuff in his garage — he was learning and inventing as he went along."

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