While at Henry Ford, Sones had learned the techniques of cardiac catheterization and his first appointment at the Cleveland Clinic was as head of Pediatric Cardiology. On October 30, 1958, while working in the Cardiac Laboratory on a 26-year-old patient with rheumatic heart disease, Sones was performing a procedure in which contrast dye was to be injected into the man's aorta. Just before the dye injection, Sones noticed that the catheter tip had inadvertently entered the man's right coronary artery. Sones asked that the catheter be withdrawn, but before that could be accomplished, a large amount of dye was injected directly into the artery. Sones expected the man's heart to go into fibrillation and prepared to do an emergency open chest massage. But instead of fibrillating, the man's heart went into asystole, and Sones shouted at him to cough, which successfully restarted the heart beating. From this experience, Sones realized that smaller amounts of contrast dye could safely be injected directly into coronary arteries, giving cardiologists accurate pictures of arterial blockages for the first time. Sones subsequently studied video engineering, dye chemistry, and optical image amplification to perfect the procedure. In 1967, Sones's Cleveland Clinic colleague, Dr. René Favaloro, performed the world's first coronary bypass surgery. Dr Favaloro called Sones "the most important contributor to modern cardiology" and said that without his work, "all our efforts in myocardial revascularization would have been fruitless."
Later career and awards
Sones was the Director of the Cleveland Clinic Department of Cardiovascular Disease from 1966 to 1975, and later served as senior physician of the Department of Cardiology. Sones was honored with numerous awards during his career, including the American Medical Association's 1978 Scientific Achievement Award and the Gairdner Foundation International Award in 1969. In 1973 he was awarded the Texas Heart Institute's Ray C. Fish Award. He was a leading participant in the founding of the Society for Cardiac Angiography and was its first president. http://www.scai.org/About/History.aspx Sones died of lung cancer on August 28, 1985, in Cleveland, at the age of 66, and was buried in Chagrin Falls, Ohio - Evergreen Cemetery.