heart and blood vessel disorders
Cardiac Catheterization and Coronary Angiography
Introduction
Cardiac catheterizationis a procedure that can measure heart function through a catheter inserted into a vein or artery and guided into the heart.Coronary angiography, which can be done during cardiac catheterization, is a type of medical imaging that uses x-rays and a contrast agent to produce images of blood vessels that feed the heart (coronary arteries). Cardiac catheterization and coronary angiography are minimally invasive methods of studying the heart and the blood vessels that supply the heart (coronary arteries) without doing surgery. These tests are usually done when Introduction to Diagnosis of Heart and Blood Vessel Disorders do not give sufficient information, when noninvasive tests suggest that there is a heart or blood vessel problem, or when a person has symptoms that make a heart or coronary artery problem very likely. One advantage to these tests is that during the test, doctors can also More than a million cardiac catheterizations and angiographic procedures are done every year in the United States. They are relatively safe, and complications are rare. With cardiac catheterization and angiography, the chance of a serious complication—such as Overview of Stroke , 