Cardiologist honored by SUNY Upstate for 50 years of service

By Nate McDonald

Q. When were first hired as a faculty member in 1959 did you intend on staying this long?
A. No. It wasn’t my intent. I trained here as a resident in internal medicine. I liked cardiology as a specialty. I requested, and was hired as a junior faculty member. I don’t think it was my long distant vision or intent to do this but it just worked out that way.

Q. How have you seen the field of cardiology evolve?
A. It’s changed a lot. Anybody would know that 50 years is a long time for progress to occur. When I first started there were no echocardiographs or CT scanners, MRIs or pacemakers. A lot of technical advances have happened in that time. The drugs have changed remarkably, too. The lifespan of people with heart disease has been extended. It’s been a wonderful ride.

Q. Has there been one idea or overarching concept you’ve tried to impart to your students?
A. Not really. You teach them the essentials, the nuts and bolts of the specialty and then they watch you do it and they learn from watching how you approach patients and problems and they learn from that, as well. It’s a process.

Q. What were the obstacles facing cardiologists in 1959 and what are they now?
A. I don’t know that I ever saw anything as obstacles, but they became apparent as obstacles when things improved and you could do them better. You did what you could with what you had and that was as far as you could go. When the technology improves so you can do better, than things improve. You don’t see things as an obstacle until you’ve moved past it. It’s just the way things are at the time.

Q. How many students would you estimate have passed through your classes?
A. We don’t have many classes. There aren’t many lectures. It’s bedside teaching in large measure, so the students see the new patients as they come in. The senior physicians sees them as well and the treatment program is reviewed, so the students are intimately involved and watch how it’s done. I don’t see many students any more. Most of my teaching is done with medical residents and cardiology fellows. That’s a three-year program. I teach more of the fellows than anyone else now, although in the past I’ve seen everybody.

Q. What have been the greatest breakthroughs in cardiology?
A. I think the development of the cardiac catheter. Initially it was used for a very limited number of things. Now it’s expanded and the technology of doing things through the heart through a slender tube has expanded tremendously. I think that might be the most startling. The other thing that came along was echocardiography. It’s the use of ultrasound that allows you to take pictures of the heart, and not only the heart and how it’s functioning, but how well the blood flow is functioning and the valves are working. It’s a remarkable tool. It’s very commonly used now. It’s become very widespread. Heart surgery has developed quite a bit as well. Although I’m not a surgeon, we evaluate patients for the surgeons.

Q. You were recently honored at Upstate’s Employee Recognition Day — can you describe it?
A. Every year they have a luncheon in which they announce the names of everyone that has worked at Upstate Medical University for five years or multiples of five years. If you’ve been there four years or six years, you don’t get mentioned. The people are mentioned and they come up and get a lapel pin and it keeps going with fewer and fewer people in every increment. When it got to 50, I was the only one. I don’t think I deserve any further recognition than anyone else, it’s just that I was alone.

Q. What do you see as the most exciting developments on the horizon for the cardiology field?
A. We keep getting closer to the cause and perhaps cure of atherosclerosis and hypertension, the two main scourges of cardiology now, but there’s no prediction that in the near future either one of them will be absolutely understood. I think the cracking of the gene code will lead to some interesting developments, but that may be a long way off, too.

Q. What do you do outside of work?
A. I like classical music; I play the piano. My wife and I go to the Syracuse Symphony. I volunteer to a limited extent with the symphony, too. We go to the Syracuse Stage and in the summer outdoor things, too. I’ve never lived and worked anywhere else except for a couple sabbatical years. We have raised three daughters and they’ve all done well, so in that sense it has been very satisfactory.