When cardiology became a separate matter

The cardiac catheter technique established by Werner Forssmann in 1929 not only introduced the era of modern cardiology, but also led to the identification of this specialist field and its practising doctors, the cardiologists. The intentionally scientifically oriented Deutsche Gesellschaft für Kreislaufforschung, founded in 1927, acquired a clinical focus with the Commission for Clinical Cardiology thanks to the cardiac catheter cardiologists trained mainly in other countries. Today this society is the German Society for Cardiology, subtitled Cardiac and Cardiovascular Research, with a membership of 5,339 (July 31st 2004). Simultaneously, the impulse for the specialist fields to become independent within the framework of the new advanced educational regulations came into force in 1972 leading to the first branches of internal medicine, cardiology, gastroenterology and pneumology, followed by the establishment of independent departments, clinics and university chairs in cardiology. (At the end of 2003 a total of 3,059 internal specialists in cardiology were working in Germany and there were 393 independent facilities, including 33 university chairs in cardiology.) In addition, 10-14 cardiac centres combining both adult and pediatric cardiology together with cardiac surgery. When setting up intensive care wards, the main impulse also came from cardiology, achieving a totally new dimension when coronary angiography and bypass surgery made it possible to make an exact diagnosis as well as to provide an efficient therapy, right up to interventional methods with acute PTCA in recent cardiac infarction. The necessary step towards informing the population led to the establishment of the German Heart Foundation in 1979 with a membership of 46,795 (December 31st 2003) and a scientific board of 436 highly qualified cardiologists. The development presented here would not have been possible without the cardiac catheter.