Costa’s success as an innovator comes from a desire to push himself out of his comfort zone, and to look for the next big idea, even if it’s outside the boundaries of his field of expertise. Early in Costa’s medical career, when he was at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands, the biggest strides in cardiac care involved radiation therapy and cardiac imaging, areas in which Costa completed his Ph.D. thesis. Soon after, Johnson & Johnson began developing a microscopic drug-eluting stent, which is inserted into a narrowed, diseased coronary artery and slowly releases a drug to block cell proliferation. Costa, who had returned to his native Brazil to practice, decided to study this relatively unknown technology alongside the current treatment protocol. “I would have bet that ultrasound would be the better, safer therapy,” says Costa. “However, we had learned that after radiation therapy, many patients were coming back to us with heart attacks. Meanwhile, angiograms of the first 15 patients with drug-eluting stents showed their coronaries to be completely clean.” This, then, was the future of cardiac care. Perseverance and Vision Over the years, Costa’s work has led to several patents in stem cell therapy, medical imaging, and medical device development. “The reason to develop better technology is so that we can better care for our patients in a minimally invasive way, faster, and with much better outcomes,” says Costa. “And sometimes the innovation comes not in the technology, but in the process.” Despite Northeast Ohio’s reputation for innovative medical care, it’s something of a miracle that Costa ended up here at all. Costa’s first impression of Cleveland was formed many years ago, when he visited for several months as a medical student to observe a research project. He took time off from his summer beach vacation in Brazil, where it was 85 degrees and sunny, and arrived to snow and brutal temperatures here. “After that, I spoke badly about Cleveland for 15 years,” says Costa, who was determined never to return. The downfall of this plan was the fact that Costa had befriended another topnotch cardiologist at University Hospitals, Dr. Daniel Simon, who served as the Harrington Institute’s first president and is now president of UH Case Medical Center. Realizing he needed a partner of Costa’s caliber in order to keep up with patient demand, Simon convinced Costa to come visit, “just to take a look.” Costa and his family were in the midst of a move to Boston, where Costa was on the verge of accepting a position as director of the catheterization lab at the University of Massachusetts. His wife, Erica, was clear: There would be no moving to Cleveland. However, she and the couple’s three children came along on the visit so that they could celebrate a family birthday together. Costa recalls, “We arrived in Cleveland late at night, and got lost coming from 36 SHAKERONLINE.COM | WINTER 2017
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