Fogarty holds more than 63 US patents for medical devices, with additional patents pending. His landmark invention, the Fogarty® Embolectomy Balloon Catheter (patented in 1963), revolutionized surgical embolectomy procedures by enabling doctors to remove blood clots in patients' extremities without employing major surgery. This technique transformed a long, highly invasive operation requiring multiple incisions and a lengthy hospital stay into a one-hour procedure done with a single incision under local anesthesia. Other Fogarty inventions include the Medtronic/AneuRx Endovascular Aortic Stent-Graft, a device that enables minimally-invasive treatment of patients with life threatening aneurysms; Fogarty® Surgical Clips and Clamps, which enable vascular surgeons to temporarily occlude vessels during surgery; and the Hancock tissue Heart Valve, the world's first porcine valve, which Fogarty invented with Warren Hancock.

Fogarty, Stanford University professor of surgery, lives in Portola Valley, CA. He has founded or co-founded over 30 start-up companies that manufacture medical devices, and also co-founded Three Arch Partners, a venture capital firm. Fogarty received his B.S. from Xavier University (1956) and his M.D. from the University of Cincinnati (1965), plus an Honorary Doctorate from Xavier University (1987). In 2000 Fogarty used his Lemelson-MIT Prize money to start The Fogarty Medical Foundation to reward clinicians developing innovative medical procedures and devices.

The author of more than 170 scientific and medical articles, Fogarty provides an exceptional role model to the next generation of physician innovators.

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Fogarty was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2001.

Web Links:
Three Arch Partners
Inventing Modern America