October 4, 2024
Our esteemed mentor, friend, and colleague Dr. Walt Montanera, Associate Professor of Medical Imaging at the University of Toronto, retired on July 1st after an amazing career spanning over 40 years.
The Department of Medical Imaging at St. Michael’s Hospital and the University of Toronto would like to congratulate him on what has been a spectacular career as an academic diagnostic and interventional neuroradiologist who has had a tremendous impact across the entire spectrum of academic neuroradiology. We have been fortunate to witness the majority of that career at St. Michael’s Hospital.
Dr. Montanera trained as a resident and fellow here at St. Michael’s in neuroradiology in the 1980s.
After a brief period in community practice at Toronto East General Hospital, Dr. Montanera returned to the University of Toronto, first at Toronto Western Hospital/UHN, and then arrived on staff at St. Michael’s starting in 1999. In his 25 years on staff at St. Michael’s, he made a lasting impression on his colleagues and trainees, was always helpful to all those around him, and became beloved by his neuroradiology colleagues and trainees, and by the neurologists, neurosurgeons, and critical care physicians with whom he worked closely and supported.
He served as the Diagnostic Radiology Residency Program Director for the University of Toronto from 2001 to 2007. He has been honoured with the prestigious E.L. Lansdown Teaching Award in Medical Imaging at the University of Toronto twice, in 1994 and 2007. He has been awarded University of Toronto Medical Imaging teaching awards for residents and fellows countless times. And, in 2022, he was recognized as an inaugural recipient of the prestigious U of T Medical Imaging “Master Teacher” award.
With an h-index of 38 and nearly 13,000 citations, he has made a huge clinical and research impact across the entire spectrum of neuroradiology, particularly in neurovascular intervention. His tireless passion, clinical and procedural skill, and research collaborations have advanced this field, especially in its still nascent years. This included being the site lead and co-author on the ESCAPE trial, published in NEJM in 2015 that changed medical practice in the treatment of stroke. In addition to caring for many appreciative patients, he has mentored and trained countless radiologists as well as neurosurgeons and neurologists in the fields of both diagnostic and therapeutic neuroradiology.
Toronto Radiology congratulates Dr. Montanera on an outstanding career at St. Michael’s Hospital and the University of Toronto that has advanced the field of neuroradiology to new heights.
