Dr. Patrick Whitlow Posthumously Honored with TCT Master Clinical Operator Award

The late Cleveland Clinic interventional cardiologist Patrick L. Whitlow, MD, was honored with the Geoffrey O. Hartzler Master Clinical Operator Award on Oct. 31 at the 28th Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) conference, convened by the Cardiovascular Research Foundation (CRF) in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Whitlow, the long-time director of interventional cardiology at Cleveland Clinic, died in March 2016.

The Master Clinical Operator Award, granted annually by the CRF, recognizes a physician who has advanced interventional cardiovascular medicine through technical excellence and innovation.

“We are honored to pay tribute to Dr. Patrick Whitlow,” said TCT Co-Director Gregg W. Stone, MD, who co-presented the award to Dr. Whitlow’s widow, Lara, and his children. “He was among the first group of early innovators who were instrumental in shaping the subspecialty of interventional cardiology.”

A singular presence in the field

The award recognizes diverse aspects of Dr. Whitlow’s 30-year career at Cleveland Clinic and prior service at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The many remembrances of Dr. Whitlow during and leading up to the award presentation consistently returned to a few core characteristics that distinguished him in his field:

• An instinctive embrace of innovation and new technologies. He invented and collaborated on the design of numerous devices, including a coronary guide wire now known as the Whitlow wire. He also played a key role in the development of the first chronic total occlusion devices and performed the first MitraClip® procedure in the early 2000s.
• A vision that made him instrumental in the advancement of subspecialties, including directional and rotational atherectomy, and gave him a striking ability to quickly size up the pros and cons of new technologies for vascular disease.
• A naturalness at teaching, mentoring and inspiring that left a legacy of former fellows who have gone on to change the course of interventional cardiology.
• A tireless devotion to patients paired with singular operative talent and clinical judgment. These traits earned the trust of countless patients and prompted colleagues nationwide to send their relatives for his care.

In the words of his colleagues

The most apt tributes come from colleagues who knew Dr. Whitlow best. Here’s a sampling of reflections from those at Cleveland Clinic and beyond:

“Pat was a remarkable physician and an early pioneer of angioplasty strategies. He drove the field forward by playing a pivotal role in developing and testing new devices for angioplasty in the 1990s — initially coronary atherectomy devices, and later stents and devices for chronic total occlusions.”
— Gregg W. Stone, MD, Columbia University Medical Center, TCT Co-Director

“Pat was an extraordinary man and richly deserves the award. Having experienced personally his commitment to patients, his acute mind and his innovative ideas, I attest that we have lost a great humanitarian and gifted physician.”
— Lars Svensson, MD, PhD, Chairman, Sydell and Arnold Miller Family Heart & Vascular Institute, Cleveland Clinic

“He had this adventuresome, inquisitive mind. He was always looking for new devices or treatments to help him take care of his really sick patients, whether it was the Rotablator™ or Frontrunner® or MitraClip or CrossBoss™. He was always interested in furthering the field and being at the cutting edge. And as a patient advocate, if it took till 11 o’clock or midnight to finish a case in the cath lab, he’d be there.”
— Stephen Ellis, MD, Chief Academic Officer, Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, Cleveland Clinic

“He was truly a premier technical and clinical operator with an extraordinary ability to take new technologies and find creative ways to advance and perfect interventional procedures. More importantly, he was a warm, compassionate and caring person who always put his patients first.”
— Martin B. Leon, MD, Columbia University Medical Center, TCT Co-Director

“People like Dr. Whitlow, who were there almost on day one, took a field that didn’t even exist previously and turned it into one of the most important academic and clinical disciplines in all of medicine.”
— Steven Nissen, MD, Chairman, Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, Cleveland Clinic

“He’s a great example of what we honor at Cleveland Clinic: an innovator, a teacher, an educator and a great clinician.”
— Toby Cosgrove, MD, CEO and President, Cleveland Clinic

“Everybody loved to work with him. And we learned so much from him. All of us former fellows say that when we’re in trouble, we always think, ‘What would Pat do if he were standing next to us?’”
— Samir Kapadia, MD, Section Head of Invasive and Interventional Cardiology, Cleveland Clinic

For a video with these and more remembrances of Dr. Whitlow, click here.