Interventional Cardiology

What is interventional cardiology?

Interventional cardiology uses specialized techniques to assess how well your heart is working. Your cardiologist can also treat disorders of your cardiovascular system, which includes your heart and blood vessels.

When performing an interventional cardiology procedure, your cardiologist inserts a catheter into a large artery. The catheter is a tube that’s slim enough to fit inside your arteries, which are the large blood vessels transporting oxygenated blood around your body.

Your cardiologist feeds the catheter into the artery, which might be in your leg, groin, or arm. They follow the catheter’s progress using technology that produces images on a screen in the treatment room.

When the catheter reaches the treatment site, your cardiologist can evaluate the tissues, take samples, and complete complex procedures. Interventional cardiology is an effective way of doing many life-saving treatments without you needing to have traditional surgery.

What interventional cardiology procedures might I need?

Your doctor at Nader Cardiology might recommend  interventional cardiology techniques like angiography or intravascular ultrasound to diagnose coronary artery disease (CAD). They can advise when it is appropriate to  perform various treatments for CAD, including:

Balloon angioplasty

Balloon angioplasty treats CAD by making more space in arteries clogged by plaque (a sticky cholesterol residue).

Stenting

Stents are tiny mesh tubes that keep your arteries open after angioplasty. Some stents are drug-eluting, which means they deliver a slow-release medication that helps prevent further narrowing of the arteries.

Atherectomy

Atherectomy involves scraping away plaque buildup from inside your arteries.

What other conditions can interventional cardiology treat?

Some of the many treatments the doctors at Nader Cardiology can recommend  using interventional cardiology techniques include:

Cardiac ablation

Ablation destroys nerve cells that are malfunctioning and causing arrhythmia (an irregular heartbeat).

Valvuloplasty

Valvuloplasty treats certain valve disorders, such as mitral valvuloplasty for mitral stenosis and pulmonary valvuloplasty for aortic and pulmonic stenosis.

Pericardial effusion drainage

Pericardial effusion is a fluid buildup in the sac that surrounds your heart.

Defect closures

Along with valvuloplasty and stenting, your cardiologist can close defects in the heart and treat other congenital heart abnormalities using interventional cardiology.

These procedures are all ones that would have involved open heart surgery, and a lengthy hospital stay not so long ago. But with interventional cardiology, you can often undergo your treatment and return home the same day.

Interventional cardiology reduces the risks and inconvenience for you, is far less painful than surgery, and promotes much faster recovery. To find out more and see how you could benefit, call Nader Cardiology today or book an appointment online.