Cardiac Catheterization

Cardiac catheterization, or heart cath, is the insertion of a catheter, a thin flexible tube, into a chamber or vessel of the heart, usually threaded in through a peripheral blood vessel, for either diagnostic or interventional purposes; it is typically carried out in a specialized cath lab equipped with fluoroscopy imaging and a highly maneuverable table. A common form, coronary catheterization, examines the coronary arteries for disease or the aftermath of a heart attack and lets physicians watch blood flow directly and, when needed, deploy a stent or inflate a balloon to reopen a blocked vessel. The German physician Werner Forssmann pioneered the clinical procedure in 1929 with a self-experiment, inserting a catheter into a vein in his own forearm, guiding it under fluoroscopy into his right atrium, and taking an X-ray to prove it had arrived there; his hospital initially removed him from his position over the stunt, but he went on to share the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1956 with Andre Frederic Cournand.