Edward "Ted" Diethrich, MD, a heart surgeon who founded the Arizona Heart Institute, has died at age 81, reports The Arizona Republic.
Dr. Diethrich earned his medical degree from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He started out his career at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston working alongside Michael DeBakey, MD, a surgeon who pioneered several heart surgery techniques.
At age 35, Dr. Diethrich moved to Phoenix, where he developed the Arizona Heart Institute at St. Joseph's Hospital in 1971. Physicians at the institute performed 400 diagnostics and surgical procedures in the first five months after it opened, according to the report.
In 1998, Dr. Diethrich opened the Arizona Heart Hospital, which he retired from in 2012. Both the heart hospital and institute were acquired by Phoenix-based Abrazo Health Care in 2010.
Dr. Diethrich died Feb. 23 from brain cancer. He believed his brain tumors were caused by radiation exposure from an imaging technique he helped develop, which allowed surgeons to see a patient's heart and veins without cutting them open, according to the report.