Please tweet and retweet
Tweet
Heart (coronary) artery blockage is a local blocking or narrowing in the arteries on the outer surface of the heart by accumulated deposits of plaque, which is mostly bad cholesterol. Every artery in the body is a blood pipeline. These pipelines get blocked with accumulation of bad cholesterol. When a cardiologist suspects blockage or narrowing of any of these heart arteries he/she will perform an angiography (threading a catheter up a thigh artery to the heart to inject a dye that is visible on X-ray) to view the inside of the arteries. When an area of artery narrowing or blockage is identified a catheter with a balloon is inserted along the same path and inflated at the problem area to open it up. This is called angioplasty. Increasingly stents are placed at these angioplasty sites to keep them open in the long term. In some cases multiple stents are sequentially placed in the same artery. If the area cannot be treated in such a fashion open heart surgery is required which involves opening the rib cage and bypassing the blocked area with a vein graft or connecting an artery from inside the rib cage to the downstream side of the blockage. These procedures have helped prolong the life of countless heart disease victims. This blog only addresses patients who have had stents placed. It does not address those who have had open heart surgery.
