Interventional Cardiology

Interventional cardiology is a branch of the medical specialty of cardiology that deals specifically with the catheter based treatment of structural heart diseases.

A large number of procedures can be performed on the heart by catheterization. This most commonly involves the insertion of a sheath into the femoral artery or radial artery (but, in practice, any large peripheral artery or vein) and cannulating the heart under X-ray visualization (most commonly fluoroscopy, a real-time x-ray.

The radial artery is more commonly used for cannulation; this approach offers several advantages, including the accessibility of the artery in most patients, the easy control of bleeding even in anticoagulated patients, the enhancement of comfort because patients are capable of sitting up and walking immediately following the procedure, and the near absence of clinically significant sequelae in patients with a normal Allen test.

The main advantages of using the interventional cardiologic approach is the avoidance of the scars, pain, and long postoperative recovery associated with surgery. Additionally, the interventional cardiology procedure of primary angioplasty is now the gold standard of care for an acute myocardial infarction. It involves the extraction of clots from occluded coronary arteries, deployment of stents and balloons through a pinprick procedure made into a major artery, leaving no scars.,

Interventional cardiology relies on non-surgical techniques to allow for heart revascularisation after a disease such as an infarct or any other ischemic-type incident.

Procedures performed by specialists in interventional cardiology:
Angioplasty Also called percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA), angioplasty is an intervention for the treatment of coronary artery disease.

Valvuloplasty Valvuloplasty is the dilation of narrowed cardiac valves (usually mitral, aortic, or pulmonary).

Congenital heart defect correction Percutaneous approaches can be employed to correct atrial septal and ventricular septal defects, closure of a patent ductus arteriosus, and angioplasty of the great vessels. Percutaneous valve replacement: An alternative to open heart surgery, percutaneous valve replacement is the replacement of a heart valve using percutaneous methods.

Coronary thrombectomy Coronary thrombectomy involves the removal of a thrombus (blood clot) from the coronary arteries.

Cardiac Radiofrequency ablation A technique performed by clinical electrophysiologists, cardiac radiofrequency ablation is used in the treatment of arrhythmias.

Surgery of the heart is done by the specialty of cardiothoracic surgery. Some interventional cardiology procedures are only performed when there is cardiothoracic surgery expertise in the hospital, in case of complications.