My friend Charles Ilsley, who has died aged 74 of pancreatic cancer, was a cardiologist and a pioneer in the field of angioplasty – widening arteries to allow blood to flow more freely to the heart. As clinical director at Harefield hospital in the London borough of Hillingdon, he developed a 24-hour primary angioplasty service for treating heart attack patients.
After studying medicine at St Mary’s hospital, London (1968-73), Charles worked as registrar for Stanley Peart who suggested that he should go into cardiology. At that time interventional cardiology was in its infancy. In 1977 he first went to Harefield as a registrar in cardiology, then moved to the National Heart hospital for a period of research with Tony Rickards, who, in 1980, assisted by Charles, performed the first balloon angioplasty in London.
Then followed a consultancy at Dunedin hospital in New Zealand (1983-87), where the cardiology unit started the innovative approach of directly treating heart attacks with angioplasty. Patient outcomes were unusually good and when Charles returned to Harefield as a consultant in 1987 he did outstanding work using angioplasty. In the 1990s, internal NHS politics sapped much of his time, as the hospital was marked for closure. It survived largely due to the evidence of lives saved by angioplasty – perhaps his greatest achievement.
Charles became clinical director at Harefield in 2008, but retained a sizeable clinical workload – in that year alone he performed 573 catheter procedures. He was a strong advocate of primary angioplasty. He demonstrated that this procedure could be as fast as thrombolysis (using clot-busting drugs). The reason for its adoption was, however, its much shorter inpatient time (three days for angioplasty compared with up to 14 days for thrombolysis).
Born in Gosport, Hampshire, to Minnie (nee Rushbrook), a shop assistant, and Charles Ilsley, a postman at Haslar hospital, at the age of 11 Charles won a local education authority grant to go to Churcher’s college, Petersfield, where he and I first met as new boys in 1961. For both of us, being at boarding school was a novel and somewhat terrifying experience, at least initially. Later, Charles often said that escaping to boarding school was the making of him – as well as taking him away from poverty at home, it brought expectation and opportunity.
In 1969, while at St Mary’s hospital, he met Anne Rogers, a nurse, and they married in 1972. The marriage ended in divorce in 2012. In 2013 he married Helen Binns, a consultant cardiologist, and they moved to Everdon, in Northamptonshire, where they lived with their springer spaniels.
Charles is survived by Helen, and by his daughter, Kate, and his son, Richard, from his first marriage, and his grandchildren, Edward and Florence, and sister, Susan.