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What Is Cardiac Catheterization?

Cardiac catheterization is a medical procedure used to diagnose and treat certain heart conditions. Cardiac catheterization (also called cardiac cath or coronary angiogram) is an invasive imaging procedure that tests for heart disease by allowing your doctor to "see" how well your heart is functioning. During the test, a long, narrow tube, called a catheter, is inserted into a blood vessel in your arm or leg and guided to your heart with the aid of a special X-ray machine.

 

For example, 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 coronary (heart) arteries show up on an x ray. This test is called coronary angiography.

 

The dye can show whether a substance called plaque has narrowed or blocked any of your coronary arteries. Plaque is made up of fat, cholesterol, calcium, and other substances found in your blood.

 

Plaque narrows the inside of the arteries and, in time, may restrict blood flow to your heart. When plaque builds up in the coronary arteries, the condition is called coronary heart disease (CHD) or coronary artery disease.

 

Blockages in the coronary arteries also can be seen using ultrasound during cardiac catheterization.

 

Ultrasound uses sound waves to create detailed pictures of the heart's blood vessels.

 

Doctors may take samples of blood and heart muscle during cardiac catheterization and do minor heart surgery.

 

Cardiologists usually do cardiac catheterization in a hospital. You're awake during the procedure, and it causes little to no pain. However, you may feel some soreness in the blood vessel where the catheter was inserted.

 

Cardiac catheterization rarely causes serious complications.

 

Your doctor uses cardiac cath to:

 

• Evaluate or confirm the presence of heart disease (such as coronary artery disease, heart valve disease, or disease of the aorta).

 

• Evaluate heart muscle function.

 

• Determine the need for further treatment (such as an interventional procedure or bypass surgery).

 

• At many hospitals, several interventional, or therapeutic, procedures to open blocked arteries are performed after the diagnostic part of the cardiac catheterization is complete. Interventional procedures include balloon angioplasty, brachytherapy, atherectomy, rotoblation, cutting balloon, and stent placements.