During a cardiac catheterization, youre kept
on your back and awake. That way you can follow your doctors instructions
during the procedure. Youre given medicine to help you relax, which may
make you sleepy.
Your doctor will numb the area on the arm, groin
(upper thigh), or neck where the small plastic tube (catheter) will enter your
blood vessel. A needle is used to make a small hole in the blood vessel.
Through this hole your doctor will put a tapered tube called a sheath.
Next, your doctor will put a thin, flexible wire
through the sheath and into your blood vessel. This guide wire is then threaded
through your blood vessel to your heart. The wire helps your doctor position
the catheter correctly. Your doctor then puts a catheter through the sheath and
slides it over the guide wire and into the coronary arteries.
Special x-ray movies are taken of the guide wire and
the catheter as theyre moved into the heart. The movies help your doctor
see where to position the tip of the catheter. When the catheter reaches the
right spot, your doctor then uses it to conduct tests or treatments. For
example, your doctor may perform
angioplasty
and
stenting.
The animation below shows the process of cardiac
catheterization. Click the "start" button to play the animation. Written and
spoken explanations are provided with each frame. Use the buttons in the lower
right corner to pause, restart, or replay the animation, or use the scroll bar
below the buttons to move through the frames.
The animation shows the step-by-step
process your doctor will follow to perform cardiac catheterization.
During the procedure, your doctor may put a special
dye in the catheter. This dye will flow through your bloodstream to your heart.
Once the dye reaches your heart, it will make the inside of your hearts
arteries show up on an x ray called an angiogram. The test is called
coronary
angiography.
Coronary angiography can show how well blood is
being pumped out of the hearts main pumping chambers, which are called
ventricles (VEN-trih-kuls). An x ray taken when the dye is in the hearts
ventricles is called a ventriculogram. (The procedure is called
ventriculography.) When the catheter is inside your heart, your doctor may use
it to take blood samples from different parts of the heart or to do minor heart
surgery.
To get a more detailed view of a blocked coronary
artery, your doctor may do intracoronary ultrasound. For this, your doctor will
thread a tiny ultrasound device through the catheter and into the artery. This
device gives off ultrasound waves that bounce off the artery wall (and its
blockage) to make an image of the inside of the artery.
If the angiogram or intracoronary ultrasound shows
blockages or other possible problems in the hearts arteries, your doctor
may use angioplasty to open up the blocked arteries.
After your doctor does all of the needed tests or
treatments, he or she will pull back the catheter and take it out along with
the sheath. The opening left in the blood vessel will then be closed up and
bandaged. A small weight may be put on top of the bandage for a few hours to
apply more pressure. This will help prevent major bleeding from the site.