Hani Sabbour

It is a minimally invasive and very commonly used procedure (not considered a surgery) and performed in the Cath Lab. Using local anesthesia and moderate sedation, a small catheter (sterile plastic tube) is placed in the superficial artery in either the wrist or the groin and, using the X-ray, threaded carefully backwards into the heart and the arteries of the heart (coronary arteries - there are normally 3 arteries). A small amount of dye that is visible on X-ray is injected into each artery in different views of the X-ray camera to make a high resolution video of each artery and the percentage of blockage it may have (generally over 70% is significant and 99% is critical). The videos are analyzed immediately and a decision is made to proceed with the next step to try and open the artery and restore blood flow, which are either angioplasty (using balloon or stent) or cardiac surgery instead. The procedure is generally very safe with most non-urgent elective cardiac Cath having a risk of 1% of all complications. The commonest is bleeding from the entry point (though obviously much less from the wrist access), the risk of the X-ray dye affecting the kidney (of importance only if the kidney function is abnormal before the test), and, very unlikely and rare, occurrence of a stroke or heart attack during the procedure (but blood thinners are given continuously during the test to prevent these two rare complications).