The 'Epworth-China connection'

Interventional cardiologists from China first arrived at the Epworth Hospital in Melbourne for training in percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty in 1988. Percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty was initially performed in China in 1981 in Xian. In those days, angioplasty balloons and catheters that were brought into China mainly by foreign experts were used repeatedly until they were broken. Dr. Antonio Colombo was invited to visit Beijing, China, in 1998 to demonstrate coronary stenting at the Chaoyang Hospital. By 2010, more than 300,000 cases of percutaneous coronary interventions (PCIs) had been performed throughout China. If the current rate of PCIs per population in the West was to be applied in China, more than 4 million PCIs should have been performed annually.