Ron Caputo, MD

Don was a perfectionist in the Lab and during training he could be pretty terse and a little gruff during cases.

If you were not moving a catheter or wire to his satisfaction he would often use a non-verbal cue—the “Baim bump”—to slide you over and take over the case. Every Beth Israel trained Fellow knows that move.

One of my fondest memories was at the yearend pool party that Don and Karin hosted at their home every year. As most will attest at that point in his career Don was never known as Mr. Sensitivity. The party was winding down, guests were leaving and everything had been put away. From across the yard I was surprised to see my three year old son talking to my Boss for about five minutes. I had no idea what they could be talking about. After their talk, Don restarted the grill, went into the kitchen to retrieve the necessaries, grilled my son a hot dog, put ketchup on it and watched him eat it. Having myself been grilled by Don on many occasions, I was really touched to see this side of him. Deep down he was really a softie.

Joseph Carrozza, MD

Here are a few quotes from Don:

“The true visionaries in Interventional Cardiology are those who take greater pride in those they have trained rather than their own personal accomplishments.”

“You can always tell a great interventional cardiologist by the quality of their angiography.”

“Major problems in the cath lab result from the smallest errors.”

Joseph Carrozza, MD

Here are a few quotes from Don:

“The true visionaries in Interventional Cardiology are those who take greater pride in those they have trained rather than their own personal accomplishments.”

“You can always tell a great interventional cardiologist by the quality of their angiography.”

“Major problems in the cath lab result from the smallest errors.”

David Cohen, MD

I have known Don Baim since first coming to Beth Israel Hospital for my cardiology training in 1989. Actually, my first encounter with Don was when he interviewed me for a fellowship position the preceding year. He must have seen some potential in me even then, because he told me that when Bill Grossman (then, Chief of Cardiology) would ask me what type of fish was mounted on his wall, the correct response was: “It looks like an arctic char, but I’ve never seen one quite that large.” Over the past several months since Don’s untimely death, I have spent many hours thinking about what his loss will mean to me personally and to the entire field of interventional cardiology. This is not an easy task as Don was larger than life in many ways. But I will do my best to recount those characteristics that made Don special to me and had the greatest influence on my career and those of so many others in the field of interventional cardiology.

First of all, Don was a great interventional cardiologist. But the world has many outstanding cath lab technicians. Don’s unique quality was that he was also a highly gifted teacher who could translate his techniques into practical skills that his trainees could apply. Each of us who trained under his leadership learned that there was a right way to do almost every step in a diagnostic or interventional procedure. And in contrast to so much of what I have observed in other labs, Don’s techniques were not simply “the way I like to do it.” Everything he did made sense, and everything he taught had a reason, virtually always driven by patient safety. To this day, I know that I (and I expect many of his trainees) continue to fall back on “What would Don Baim do?” whenever we’re faced with a challenging situation in the cath lab. And inevitably, that was the right solution.

In addition to his technical prowess, Don was an intellectual giant. Even at a place like Harvard where one was always surrounded by incredibly intelligent physicians, Don stood out for his breadth and depth of knowledge in almost any area. Beyond his encyclopedic knowledge, however, Don had a remarkable ability to quickly grasp entire fields of knowledge outside of his immediate expertise. And once he was familiar with a concept, he could usually explain it far better and more clearly than the person who had come up with it in the first place.

Don was a great leader and motivator. During the early 1990s, the interventional cardiology section at the BI was always buzzing with activity. The drive to understand the mechanisms of PCI in all its forms and to learn the appropriate techniques and patient populations for each new device was pervasive, and the excitement was palpable. Throughout this early era, Don was omnipresent—always pushing each of us to take on new projects and new technical and analytical skill sets. I am certain that my longstanding interest in the academic side of interventional cardiology can be traced directly to these formative years under his guidance.

Finally, Don was a visionary. He had a unique ability to size up a new device or new technique and to decide at a very early stage whether it was potentially useless or even revolutionary. He also had a tremendous knack for being able to bridge the gap between clinical need and engineering. I always envied his ability to look at an early device prototype and immediately understand what needed to be done to convert a rough concept into a clinical reality. In addition, his patience and persistence with early phase device testing including a unique ability to troubleshoot on the fly when these early prototypes inevitably encountered unique and unanticipated failure modes was unrivaled.

His vision was not restricted to technology, however. When I was entering my interventional fellowship, I had just spent a summer at the Harvard School of Public Health studying biostatistics and other quantitative methods. During that time, I became interested in the concept of cost-effectiveness analysis and on my return to the BI I asked Don whether he thought there might be interest in applying cost-effectiveness to the evaluation of cardiovascular devices. Rather than rejecting this idea as “off track” and unproven, he immediately saw the potential of using novel methods to study the clinical and economic outcomes of device technology. With his support, guidance, and encouragement, I was able to launch an entirely new area of investigation and career path that was largely unexplored at that time. I am sure that without Don’s support, my career would not have been nearly as productive or as rewarding.

For all these reasons, I will personally miss Don: his intellect, his teaching abilities, his curiosity, his vision, and his friendship. But for these same reasons, I believe that his spirit continues to infect and influence our field in many ways. And that is his true legacy.

Antonio Colombo, MD

I have many thoughts about Don, the one that I would like to remember is: “A man with academic strength and innovating ingenuity.”

Don Cutlip, MD

For all of us who trained under or worked with Dr. Baim, he was the standard of excellence in modern era coronary intervention, both in the clinical and innovation/research arenas. As in any pursuit of excellence, the student will always remember when he reaches that point where the master can say “well done.” This is a powerful influence and only deserved by the true giants. While in my case this was more of an evolution than an instant, earning his acknowledgement is still something that makes me better.

Bill Grossman, MD

Don Baim was one of the smartest and most creative people that I have ever known. He was the first person I recruited to the faculty at the Beth Israel Hospital Cardiology Division in Boston after I accepted the job as Chief of Cardiology. Don had just finished his Cardiology Fellowship at Stanford, and was looking at academic jobs. To our good fortune, Stanford did not have an Asst Professor position to offer him, but we did, and Don and I arrived at our jobs at the BI on the same day in early October 1981. Don’s first job was as Director of the CCU at BI, but he rapidly transitioned to Director of the Cath Lab, where the rest is history. Don created one of the premier invasive cardiology programs in the world. His intellectual and technical brilliance attracted a series of outstanding young people who sought his mentorship, and then went on to be leaders in the field, directing their own programs. He leaves a wonderful legacy; it was a true privilege to have known him.

Elizabeth Holper, MD

For those of us fortunate enough to have trained in interventional cardiology under Don Baim, this was an experience marked by both incredible excitement as well as some trepidation. After all, this was one of the famed authors of our reference textbook. Several things became quite clear in a very short time while working with Don Baim. Firstly, his technical skill and decisive approach to each case were remarkable. But Don Baim represented what we all hoped to become as interventional cardiologists: technically excellent, but also a physician with a comprehensive knowledge and understanding of the data behind clinical and procedural decisions. He was one of the smartest physicians with whom I have worked, and also one that evaluated and understood clinical trial data better than any other. I am proud to have trained under Don Baim and am saddened by his early loss, with the knowledge that he had so much more to contribute to our subspecialty.

Dean Kereiakes, MD

Thank you for the many insights and perspectives you gave so unselfishly over the years. Your combination of intellect and humor was unique and is sorely missed. Your memory is eternal.

Fred Khosravi

Don was a guru of his time. He is truly missed for his singular clinical and scientific contributions, but even more importantly for his rare and keen aptitude to genuinely and unquestionably decipher the physics of medicine. Don and I started working together in 1989, during the early days of the Multi-link stent and continued on with the Endotex Carotid Stent, the EPI FilterWire, the Mynx Closure device, the Lotus Valve, and the ArchStent Ostial System. Through it all, I learned the power of intellectual honesty from Don and his famous saying, which is now framed on my office wall—”Happiness equals Reality minus Expectations.”

Spencer King, MD

I used to fight with Don over the value of the routine angiographic late loss surrogate as opposed to the TLR without angiographic follow up. Even though I thought I was right (we all do) I was a bit intimidated when Rick Kuntz said that Don was one of the smartest people he had ever known. We surely miss his intellect and his friendship.

Hank Kucheman (EVP, Group President, Cardiovascular)

Don’s experiences as a clinician, technology adopter, innovator, educator, teacher, and scientist were very unique in the field and helped me immeasurably as a business leader. He had a very unique ability to simplify complex issues in ways that the “average person” could grasp and understand. And, as a result, people like myself, were able make better and more informed decisions in the best interest of patient care. Through our interactions, I learned the power of his intellect, his honesty, his patient centric mentality, his humor, and scientific integrity. He has left a permanent imprint on the entire field in terms of who we are, what we do, and how we do it. He is truly missed.

Richard Kuntz, MD

Don was clairvoyant and loved using metaphors. He strived to explain concepts, both didactic and original, in clever ways that brought understanding from unusual perspectives. Being a physics and mathematics graduate from the University of Chicago, he often explained geometric and physiological cardiac concepts using examples from the special theory of relativity, with a giddy enthusiasm that wasn’t always shared by the least gifted among us.

During my fellowship training I completed a graduate degree in biostatistics from the Harvard School of Public Health. One day I returned to the cath lab from a theoretical probability class where the professor had just motivated the connection between probability generating functions and moment generating functions derived from the Taylor Expansion Series in calculus. The professor had taught that these functions were related to several mathematical and physics concepts, including Fourier Transform, but that he could not recall the derivation.

As I was scanning the cath lab schedule, Don was entering new patients on the board and said, “Dr. Kuntz, what did you learn today in probability class?” I said, “Oh, something about Taylor expansion and moment generating functions.” Without skipping a beat, Don took the chalk piece that he used to schedule the next patient, and he found an empty space of chalk board and showed the proof that some probability functions in the complex domain were not satisfied by moment generating functions, and he derived Fourier Transform as the solution to describe complex continuous probability distributions, with all the necessary calculus and imaginary number symbols. I was shocked, and asked him how he could possibly know all this. He looked at me, somewhat incredulous, and said simply, “I learned it in college.” He then finished updating the cath lab schedule and went on to do another case.