This year's CIRSE awards ceremony was hosted by Professor Johannes Lammer, CIRSE President, and Professor Roberto Passariello, meeting chairman. Professor Barry Katzen, the founder and MD of Baptist Cardiac and Vascular Institute, Miami, Florida received the CIRSE Gold Medal for outstanding achievements in interventional radiology. Professor Alexander Rosenberger, one of the founding members of CIRSE and President of its congress in Jerusalem in 1986 received the Distinguished Fellow award, as did Professor Giovanni Simonetti, one of the pioneers of interventional radiology, who is Professor of radiology and the director of the faculty of radiology at the School of Medicince and Surgery of the University of Rome Tor Vergata.
On accepting his award, Katzen said "I know how unusual it is for an American to receive this award. It is a tremendous honour and career highlight to be in this position." Katzen was awarded a fellowship in cardiovascular radiology at St Vincent's Hospital and Medical Center in New York. He then attended the University of Rome. In 1976 Katzen established the Non-Invasive Vascular Laboratory and Interventional Radiology Programs at Alexandria Hospital in Virginia. During this time he pioneered the use of technology to enhance the process of education for established practitioners. He is credited with being the first to use 'live patient demonstrations' in the US, which went on to become the benchmark for procedural education in endovascular therapy.
Rosenberger headed the Department of Radiology at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa for 22 years and taught as a professor of radiology at the Faculty of Medicine of the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa. He established the Angiographic/Interventional Service at Rambam and is one of the founders of angiography and interventional radiology in his country. For more than 20 years he was President of the Israel Radiological Society. Rosenberger is now retired, but continues his clinical work and post graduate teaching. After receiving his award, Rosenberger praised "This is a good society. You are good people!"
Simonetti is actively engaged as an angiographer in routine healthcare, diagnosis and interventional activities. He is known as the most active interventional radiologist in Italy, regarding healthcare as well as education and politics. Simonetti was the first doctor in Italy to perform the embolisation of a digestive haemorrhage (1971) and PTA on a stenosis of the iliac artery (1973). In 1976 he founded the European Association of Radiology (AER) in Lund, together with Professors Rossi and Passariello and 16 other colleagues from several European countries.
Published: Nov 2006
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