Contact: Will Sansom
Phone: (210) 567-2579
E-mail: sansom@uthscsa.edu

PALMAZ
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San Antonio (Feb. 27, 2007) — Julio C. Palmaz, M.D., Ashbel Smith Professor from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and inventor of the world’s first stent to treat coronary and peripheral artery disease, will receive the 2007 Gold Medal Award from the Society of Interventional Radiology on March 2 in Seattle, Wash.

The award is another in a long list of honors for the famed radiologist, including induction last May into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio. His innovative career also is featured in a current display at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin, and the Palmaz Stent has been displayed at the Smithsonian Institution.

The Palmaz Stent, the world’s most successful medical device, was named one of “10 Patents That Changed the World” in the August 2002 issue of IP Worldwide magazine. Dr. Palmaz developed the prototype for it in the 1980s, and it gained U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for use with angioplasty for cardiovascular disease in 1994.

This past November, Dr. Palmaz accepted the inaugural Julio Palmaz Prize for Innovation in Healthcare and the Biosciences. This award was established by BioMed SA, a nonprofit corporation founded in 2005 to help promote and grow the city of San Antonio’s thriving health care and biosciences sector.

Stents are placed in 2 million people annually worldwide.

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The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio is the leading research institution in South Texas and one of the major health sciences universities in the world. With an operating budget of $536 million, the Health Science Center is the chief catalyst for the $14.3 billion biosciences and health care industry, the leading sector in San Antonio’s economy. The Health Science Center has had an estimated $35 billion impact on the region since inception and has expanded to six campuses in San Antonio, Laredo, Harlingen and Edinburg. More than 22,000 graduates (physicians, dentists, nurses, scientists and allied health professionals) serve in their fields, including many in Texas. Health Science Center faculty are international leaders in cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, aging, stroke prevention, kidney disease, orthopaedics, research imaging, transplant surgery, psychiatry and clinical neurosciences, pain management, genetics, nursing, allied health, dentistry and many other fields. For more information, click on www.uthscsa.edu.