Procedures
The term balloon angioplasty is commonly used to describe percutaneous coronary intervention, which describes the inflation of a balloon within the coronary artery to crush the plaque into the walls of the artery. While balloon angioplasty is still done as a part of nearly all percutaneous coronary interventions, it is rarely the only procedure performed.
Other procedures that are done during a percutaneous coronary intervention include:
- Implantation of stents
- Rotational or laser atherectomy
- Brachytherapy (Use of radioactive source to inhibit restenosis.)
Sometimes a small mesh tube, or "stent", is introduced into the blood vessel or artery to prop it open using percutaneous methods. Angioplasty with stenting is a viable alternative to heart surgery for some forms of non-severe coronary artery disease. It has consistently been shown to reduce symptoms due to coronary artery disease and to reduce cardiac ischemia, but has not been shown in large trials to reduce mortality due to coronary artery disease, except in patients being treated for a heart attack acutely (also called primary angioplasty). In acute cases, there is a small but definite reduction of mortality with this form of treatment compared with medical therapy, which usually consists of the administration of thrombolytic ("clot busting") medication.
Read more about this topic: Percutaneous Coronary Intervention
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