Dec 02, 2007 (Star Tribune - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- MDT | charts | news | PowerRating -- On May 10, 1996, a New Yorker named Charles Riegel was wheeled into an operating room with a badly blocked right coronary artery. The doctor tried snaking a catheter through an artery to the blockage, where a balloon would be inflated to break up the hardened plaque, a common procedure called angioplasty. Several catheters didn’t work. Then the balloon on the final catheter -- made by Medtronic Inc. -- burst. Riegel lost consciousness and required emergency bypass surgery.
