A LEADING heart expert at an East End hospital has been branded an outstanding innovator for his work in treating heart disease. For the second year running Professor Martin Rothman, director of the Heart Attack Centre in Bethnal Green was honoured wi

A LEADING heart expert at an East End hospital has been branded an "outstanding innovator" for his work in treating heart disease.

For the second year running Professor Martin Rothman, director of the Heart Attack Centre in Bethnal Green was honoured with an NHS Innovations London award for pioneering a host of breakthrough treatments throughout his career.

In the early 80s he was one of the first doctors in the UK to use angioplasty on heart attack patients to unblock arteries while his colleagues were still using surgery to do the job.

And later on he introduced the coronary stent which is a tiny scaffold-like device inserted into a patient's artery to stop it from closing.

At the time, both these treatments were deemed unique and even dangerous but they are now mainstream procedures.

Presenting his award Olympic javelin gold medallist Tessa Sanderson said: "This award goes to an outstanding innovator.

"He recognised early on the need to kiss a lot of frogs in order to find the princes of ideas, something which has pushed him further and kept him at the leading edge of research.