The Nation - News from March 10, 1988

A laser has been used for the first time to vaporize plaque blocking a human heart artery without surgery, hospital officials in St. Louis Park, Minn., said. The one-hour experimental procedure was conducted under local anesthetic on the right coronary artery of Janis Konze, 38, of Chaska, on Tuesday by Methodist Hospital cardiologist Leonard Nordstrom. The woman was being released from the hospital Wednesday. “It is a new alternative to other treatments of blood vessel disease such as angioplasty, drug treatments and bypasses,” said hospital spokesman Jim Bayer. Bayer said the laser was used with a catheter and fiber optics along with angioplasty, in which a balloon is inflated in the clogged artery to help open it.