• intervention

Grant Hieshima, MD died unexpectedly on August 9, 2019, at the age of 77, while enjoying one of his lifelong passions, deep-sea fishing, with his son Michael at his side. Grant was born in Southern California in 1942, and attended UCLA as an undergraduate. He received his medical education from Tulane University Medical School, in New Orleans, where he graduated with honors in 1969. Grant initially wanted to become a general surgeon but subsequently decided to pursue radiology with subspecialty training in neuroradiology and nuclear medicine. He was appointed to a faculty position in 1974 at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, California where he began to develop techniques to manage vascular trauma.

In 1983, Dr John Bentson recruited Grant to UCLA Medical Center to start a new program in neurointerventional radiology (NIR). I was completing my final year of residency in radiology at UCLA, and after training with Grant, I asked to become his first NIR fellow.

In the 1980s, the field of NIR was just beginning, and pioneers included Dr. Alejandro Berenstein at New York University; Dr. Chuck Kerber at The University of California, San Diego; Dr’s. Fernando Vinuela and Allan Fox at Toronto General Hospital; Dr. Gerard Debrun at the University of Illinois; Dr. Fedor Serbinenko at the Burdenko Neurosurgery Institute in Moscow; Dr’s. Victor Shcheglov and Alexander Zubkov, St Petersburg, Russia; Dr. Pierre Lasjaunias, Hospital Kremlin Bicetre, Paris; Dr. Charlie Strother, University of Wisconsin; and Dr. Grant Hieshima.

At UCLA we would start at 7:30 am with morning read outs of CT brain scans, spend the afternoon performing diagnostic angiography, myelography, pneumoenchephalography of the brain ventricles, lumbar punctures for cerebrospinal fluid analysis, and then in the late afternoon would start NIR procedures, usually working until the …