Testimonial from Dr. Bill Lombardi

Dr. William “Bill” Lombardi, Interventional Cardiologist and adviser to Rampart, recently sat down to talk about the necessity of better protecting all medical professionals who operate in radiation exposure environments.

The heavy, protective lead required to be worn by physicians and their teams during CTO, PCI and other interventional procedures comes up short in two ways. First- the worn lead can leave openings for exposure. And second- the prolonged bearing of the extra lead weight on the body has been shown to lead to advanced orthopedic damage and fatigue.

In the video, Dr. Lombardi speaks to this and about what lead him to Rampart. Please find a transcription of his testimonial below.

“My name is Bill Lombardi, and I’m an interventional cardiologist currently at University of Washington.

I went into private practice out of Heart Failure/Transplant Interventional Fellowship at the University of Utah and went into practicing in Bellingham Washington, a small town about 90 miles north of Seattle.

In 2005 I was getting a little bored and decided I wanted to learn how to do what I thought at the time was the hardest thing in coronary intervention which is CTOs. And that has led me into this world of doing high-risk PCI and CTO PCI. And effectively for most of my career doing things that everybody told me I shouldn’t do, couldn’t be done, or couldn’t be made to be taught.

And so I’ve always been trying to figure out- how we do things better, how do we do it safer, how do we do it more efficiently? And that really led initially me wanting to get into robotics because I wanted to stop wearing lead, and if you look at our job about 50% of people have some orthopedic injury - the normal population is somewhere around 4%.

And so I started working on that, and then as that moved along I got involved with a company called Rampart IC. And again the reason was is not only did I want to make it so that I don’t have to wear lead, but I also wanted to make it so my staff didn’t have to wear lead and, I wanted to be able to continue to do my job in the easiest orthopedic way I could.

And so because of that I’m now doing all of my cases lead-free. Actually I get upset when I get put in a room that I can’t use a Rampart and I have to wear lead. Lead doesn’t protect your head, your eyes, or your neck.

People who do this job know days they’re in clinic versus days they’re in the cath lab. And like anything- if I made you walk around wearing and 20 lbs of something all day long, you’re gonna be a lot more fatigued then if you don’t. Whereas before, after four or five CTOs and a long day in the lab, you’re just not gonna feel that way.

And so I really think that the ability to shed the lead really helps you to be able to get back having a little bit more of a normal life.

It doesn’t take long actually - I know an institution. They just surveyed: and 40% of the interventionalists have back injuries right now, and are affected by chronic back pain and chronic injury because of our jobs.

We work too many hours, we have to deal at times with inappropriate staffing, and there are lots of excuses by our administrators about lack of capital budget and inability to afford things. And I think we need to stand up for ourselves and say – “great you don’t wanna buy this for me, I’d like to see you put my lead on and wear it all day every day and then tell me that - I don’t; that this doesn’t matter.”

Many people in our profession have lost touch with how destructive our profession is to ourselves and we make a lot of reasons that it’s OK to be treated the way we are but it really isn’t.

And it’s really allowed me to be able to - when I get home have more energy, so I get to work out more and do a better job of taking care of myself. And I’m hopeful that it will make it so that after my career I can still go out and enjoy my life and do the things I want to do which is to golf and fish and ski with my wife and my kids. And so that I don’t have to deal with some long-term disability associated with what I had to sacrifice to do my job.”

Statistics referenced in video testimonial:

Ross AM, Segal J, Borenstein D, et al. Prevalence of spinal disc disease among interventional cardiologists. Am J Cardiol. 1997 Jan 1; 79(1):68-70. doi:10.1016/s00029149(96)00678-9. PMID: 9024739.

Klein LW, Tra Y, Garratt KN, et al. Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions. Occupational health hazards of interventional cardiologists in the current decade: Results of the 2014 SCAI membership survey. Catheter Cardiovasc Interv. 2015 Nov; 86(5):913-24. doi:10.1002/ccd.25927. Epub 2015 Mar 24. PMID: 25810341