From Wikidoc - Reading time: 2 min
Editor-In-Chief: C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D. [1]
Cardiac catheterization is performed to diagnose and assess the severity of aortic, coronary artery, pulmonary arterial, valvular, pericardial and myocardial disease.
Indications for Cardiac Catheterization[edit | edit source]
- Confirm the presence of a suspected heart ailment
- Quantify the severity of the disease and its effect on the heart
- Seek out the cause of a symptom such as shortness of breath or signs of cardiac insufficiency
- Make a patient assessment prior to heart surgery
- To measure intracardiac and intravascular blood pressures
- To take tissue samples for biopsy
- To inject various agents for measuring blood flow in the heart; also to detect and quantify the presence of an intracardiac shunt
- To inject contrast agents in order to study the shape of the heart vessels and chambers and how they change as the heart beats