Cesare Gianturco (February 12, 1905 – August 25, 1995) was an Italian-American physician and one of the earliest contributors to the specialty of interventional radiology.
Several medical innovations bear his name, including the first coronary stent to be approved by the FDA; a wool coil that could be deployed inside blood vessels to stop bleeding; the self-expanding Z-stent; and a vena cava filter to trap blood clots in the venous system before they reached the heart.
Gianturco had come to the Mayo Clinic to train in surgery, hoping to eventually join his brother in a surgical practice in Italy.
[1] At the invitation of a friend, physician Vito Witting, Gianturco moved to Illinois to join the medical group at the Carle Clinic in Urbana.
[2] Gianturco's work at the Carle Clinic was interrupted by his service in Europe as a lieutenant colonel with the U.S. Army Medical Corps during World War II.
[4] With radiologists Sidney Wallace and Gerald D. Dodd, Gianturco helped to establish the John S. Dunn Sr. Foundation Center for Research in Radiological Sciences.
While in France during World War II, he had devised three-dimensional X-ray techniques that helped surgeons locate in advance shell fragments in the eyes of wounded soldiers.
Gianturco showed the radiologist how the same purpose could be achieved with a piece of string, an IV pole and a test tube clamp.