Spencer B. King III

Spencer B. King, III (1937-)

 
Dr. Spencer King received his degree from the Medical College of Georgia and specialized in internal medicine and cardiology at Emory University. He was involved in early innovations with angiography, co-developing a multipurpose single femoral catheter approach in Denver with Fred Schoonmaker, improving upon the Sones brachial cut-down technique. The femoral catheter approach that he developed was widely adopted. In the early seventies, Emory Hospital asked Spencer to return to develop the first catheterization laboratory for performing coronary arteriography.

 
Spencer met Andreas in 1976 at the AHA meeting in Miami and attended his early courses in Zurich. In 1980, Andreas confided to Spencer that he wished to leave Zurich to come to the United States to work in a more open-minded environment for developing PTCA. Spencer and Willis Hurst convinced him to come to Emory. Spencer and Andreas worked closely together, along with John Douglas, refining angioplasty, establishing a large database, publishing multi-center clinical trials, and organizing live demonstration courses. In 1985, Spencer was asked to assume directorship of the Andreas Grüntzig Cardiovascular Center.

 
Spencer currently serves as the President of Heart and Vascular Institute at Saint Joseph's Health System, Inc. He is the Editor-in-Chief of JACC and an Editorial Consultant for The New England Journal of Medicine. He also served as the President of the ACC and SCAI.