Heart Doctor Still Sharing His Expertise At 97-Years-Old

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- Dr. Donald Fisher has helped thousands of hearts keep beating in his 65 years at Allegheny General Hospital. At 97, he still stops by a couple days a week so cardiac doctors can pick his brain.

"When I first started," says Dr. George Gabriel, director of clinical cardiology, "you would say you want to do this, and they would look at you a little funny, and then you'd say Dr. Fisher's on his way in. And they'd say, 'Oh, that's okay. You can do it.'"

Dr. Fisher was a leader in cardiac catheterization, a thin tube threaded through a blood vessel into the heart, for diagnosis and treatment.

He joined the staff at AGH back in 1952. On Christmas Eve of that year, he performed the very first heart cath surgery in Pittsburgh. And the patient did well.

Dr. David Lasorda, director of cardiac catheterization, says his predecessor was a pioneer.

"When we think we're doing some new technique, or new procedure, we find out that Dr. Fisher had worked on this or tried this in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s," said Dr. Lasorda.

He began practicing medicine on the battlefields of World War II. Dr. Bob Biederman, director of cardiac MRI, says Dr. Fisher doesn't make mere social visits.

"I've never seen him in a position where he's not had a question, a thought, an inquiry, a concept that he's interested in, and he's trying to advance," he says.

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Dr. Fisher shared his latest project.

"I would like to find a way of predicting when a patient without any symptoms is heading for sudden cardiac death," Dr. Fisher says.

So why he doesn't just enjoy retirement? Well, he does.

"Like everybody else," he said, "I'd like to make a difference."