Pulse
The Inventor
At age 82, Kurt Amplatz is still thinking up new devices to eliminate the need for surgery.
As Kurt Amplatz, M.D., sits down for an interview, it quickly becomes clear that he would rather be in his machine shop than talking with a reporter. A wiry man who still carries the remains of an accent brought over from Weistrach, Austria, in 1952, Amplatz picks up and fingers the calipers, molds, and sample devices that are scattered across his desk as he explains the six projects he has in development—refinements to the occlusion devices he invented to fix congenital heart defects as well as ones used to treat patients with abdominal aneurysms and atrial fibrillation.
At age 82, Amplatz isn’t thinking about retirement or even cutting back his work schedule. “I’ll die on the job,” he says and explains that although he does go to the gym three days a week and plays tennis, machining molds for new medical devices is his true hobby. Although Amplatz is no longer involved in the day-to-day running of AGA Medical Corporation, the Golden Valley company he founded in 1995, he’s in his shop working on his inventions nearly every day.
So what would drive a former University of Minnesota professor of radiology to start a business at age 70? And what would compel him to stick with it after a nasty court battle over the company’s ownership led a Hennepin County judge in 2003 to bar him from the premises for a year and a half?
“I was convinced that these devices had a big future,” he says, explaining that he initially went into business with his son, Curtis, in 1990. In a warehouse on University Avenue in St. Paul that they rented for $70 a month, the father and son figured out a way to braid threads of a superelastic alloy called Nitinol into a wire mesh that could be formed into occluders that expanded into a previously memorized shape after passing through a catheter.
Amplatz wanted to grow the business; his son did not. Not wanting to see his ideas and prototypes shelved, Amplatz dissolved the first business and started AGA, naming his son-in-law, Franck Gougeon, business manager. “I had a lot of experience working with other companies and knew that it takes an unbelievable amount of time to get anything developed with another company. So I decided to start my own company and call my own shots,” he says.
Plugging Holes in Hearts
Although Amplatz isn’t calling the shots any more (he is now an independent consultant, and AGA has first right of refusal on his designs), he is the brains behind the 13 patents that hang in the company’s reception area and is still the engine that drives the organization’s progress.
Today, AGA employs nearly 200 people and anticipates sales of more than $100 million this year. “We are the only company in the world that is making specific devices for specific cardiac defects,” he says, adding that they’ve sold more than 175,000 of the Amplatzer devices since 1995. Those products correct atrial septal defect, membranous ventricular septal defect, patent foramen ovale, muscular ventricular septal defect, and patent ductus arteriosus (PDA).
To show how they work, Amplatz picks up one of the tiny septal occluders on his desk and threads it through a catheter. When it reaches the opening at the end, the occluder opens like an umbrella into a disc about the size of a quarter. The disc, which seals against the wall of the heart, is attached to a short “waist”—a tiny tunnel filled with polyester fiber that passes through the hole in the heart. That waist is connected to a second disc that opens on the opposite side of the heart wall. Blood clots form around the fiber in the waist and seal off the hole.
Before Amplatz’ devices became available (the devices used to correct atrial septal defect and PDA have FDA approval; the others are under clinical investigation in the United States and are approved for use in Europe), patients with congenital heart defects faced open heart surgery. “Now you can do the whole thing with a little stick in the groin. The patient goes home the next day without a scar on the chest,” Amplatz says.
Thinking Ahead
Amplatz, who studied engineering before pursuing medicine in Austria, hasn’t just changed the lives of patients. He’s also changed the fields of interventional radiology and pediatric cardiology. His 84-page CV lists the more-than-700 articles, books, and abstracts he’s published, plus awards and honors from such organizations as the Radiological Society of North America and the American Roentgen Ray Society.
“There’s no question he’s one of the visionaries in the field,” says David Hunter, M.D., a professor of radiology at the University of Minnesota who began working with Amplatz as a second-year resident in 1979. “He has the weird capability of developing solutions to problems that people don’t realize they have yet.” For example, when a gooseneck snare Amplatz developed to remove foreign bodies in blood vessels became available for use, interventional radiologists discovered they also could use it to reposition stents and remove foreign bodies in the urinary tract and biliary and gastrointestinal areas.
In addition to the occluders and the snare, Amplatz’ name is associated with some of the basic tools of interventional radiology and cardiology: a catheter that’s used to examine the coronary arteries through a blood vessel in the groin, a balloon catheter to measure the size of a hole in the heart, metal grafts for repairing aneurysms, guide wires, renal dilators and sheaths, thrombectomy devices, and vena cava filters. “The fact that he’s still inventing things and starting companies like AGA to bring his inventions into the clinical arena is relatively astonishing to those of us who don’t have that kind of energy,” Hunter says of the octogenarian.
But Amplatz refuses to quit, preferring to spend his days conceiving plans and turning out prototypes for tiny lifesaving devices.
“Most retired physicians just play golf and play with the computer and kill time. Many of them enjoy themselves, and I think many of them are bored,” he says. “I’m never bored.”—Kim Kiser