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Cardiac catheterization, also called cardiac catheterization or heart catheterization, is a medical procedure used to diagnose and treat certain heart conditions. It allows doctors to take a closer look at the heart to detect problems and perform other tests or procedures.

Your healthcare provider may recommend a cardiac catheterization to find the cause of symptoms such as chest pain or irregular heartbeat. Before surgery, you may need diagnostic tests, such as blood tests, heart imaging tests, or stress tests, to determine how well your heart is working and help guide the surgery.

During cardiac catheterization, a long, thin, flexible tube called a catheter is placed into a blood vessel in the arm, groin, upper thigh, or neck. The catheter is then threaded through the blood vessels to the heart. It can be used to check your heart valves or take samples of blood or heart muscle. Your doctor may also use an ultrasound (a test that uses sound waves to create images), or they may inject dye into your coronary arteries to see if your arteries are narrowed or blocked. Cardiac catheterization may also be used in place of some heart surgeries to repair heart defects and replace heart valves.

who needs it

Your healthcare provider may recommend a cardiac catheterization to find out the cause of heart problem symptoms or to treat or repair heart problems.

Cardiac catheterization can be used for different purposes.

• Better understand other test resultssuch as echocardiogram (echo), cardiac MRI and cardiac CT scan. This is especially helpful if the results of these tests don’t identify a problem or are different from what your doctor found when he examined you.
• Diagnose heart disease Examples include arrhythmias, heart disease, pulmonary hypertension, cardiomyopathy, coronary artery disease and heart valve disease, including aortic stenosis and mitral regurgitation.
• Evaluate you before possible heart surgerysuch as heart transplantation.
• Measure oxygen levels and blood pressure In your ventricles and pulmonary arteries.

Your doctor may perform other procedures during cardiac catheterization to diagnose or treat your condition.

• collect biopsies Small samples of heart tissue are used for more laboratory tests. Biopsies can be used for genetic testing, to check for myocarditis (an inflammation of the heart), or to look for transplant rejection.
• Use coronary angiography A dye is injected through the catheter to look at the heart or blood vessels.
• Perform minor heart surgery Treat congenital heart defects and replace or enlarge narrowed heart valves.
• Using percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) Opening up narrowed or blocked areas of the coronary arteries. PCI may include balloon dilation, also called angioplasty or stent placement. Most people with heart disease or underlying heart disease have narrowed or blocked coronary arteries.
• Catheter ablation Treatment of cardiac arrhythmias.

Who should not undergo cardiac catheterization?

Your doctor may wait to have surgery or advise you not to have a cardiac catheterization if you have any of the following conditions:

• abnormal electrolyte levels in the blood
• acute gastrointestinal bleeding
• Acute renal failure, or severe kidney disease not treated with dialysis
• acute stroke
• Blood that is too thin due to blood thinning medications or other reasons
• High blood levels of digoxin, a heart drug used to treat heart failure or arrhythmia
• Previous severe allergic reaction to dye used during cardiac catheterization
• Severe anemia, in which red blood cells or hemoglobin are below normal levels
• Unexplained fever
• untreated infection

Source: https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/cardiac-catheterization

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