Dr. Ilan Alexander Yaeger (1941, Yugoslavia - January 2022, Israel)

Dr. Yaeger developed an efficient method to assess the flow of blood to heart lesions after implanting up to four stents in up to four coronary blood arteries.
A stent is implanted in coronary artery in order to keep it open to blood flow after opening the blocked artery by using a catheterization procedure. This catheterization saves the patient an open heart surgery to implant a bypass artery.
However, if more than one coronary artery is blocked, there is more than one possibility to implant the stents. A method is needed before the catheterization to assess what will be the blood flow after implanting a few stents in a few damaged coronary arteries in each of the possible options, to ensure that after the catheterization all the heart lesions will get a sufficient blood supply. The best is to choose the option that will result in optimal blood flow to all the heart lesions. If there is no method to assess in advance the results of implanting a few stents, a cardiologist may prefer an open heart surgery to implant bypass coronary arteries, which is a difficult surgery for the patient.
Dr. Yaeger’s method enables cardiologists to assess in advance the blood flow after implanting up to four stents. Using his method the cardiologist may assess in advance a few possibilities of stent implants. Then he may compare the expected blood supply to all the heart lesions for each possibility, and choose the optimal one for the patient. Then he should consider catheterization of a few stents versus difficult open heart surgery, and avoid difficult open heart surgery to patients with a few blocked or damaged coronary arteries.

Dr. Ilan Alexander Yaeger is not among us since 4th January 2022.
He was survived by his two sons and his daughter.