Fascinating isn’t it? Well, that how advanced the medical industry has become.
Coronary angiography is a new-age imaging technique that doctors use to perform medical tests and procedures to help diagnose and treat coronary artery diseases. It is carried out by inserting a long, thin, flexible tube called a ‘catheter’ into a blood vessel, either through your arm, groin or neck. It is then threaded to your heart. This imaging technique allows doctors to picture the coronary arteries, through x-ray images, from which artery blockages are studied.
Clearing a clogged or blocked heart artery, once required open-heart surgeries, followed by long and painful recovery periods. Not anymore!
In this blog, we talk about Traditional coronary angiography Vs Radial angioplasty, their medical procedures, process time, and benefits, and evaluate which of the two is the better option.
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Coronary angiography is a test that uses dye and special X-rays to detect blockages, if present, inside your coronary arteries. These arteries are responsible for supplying oxygen-rich blood to your heart.
What’s the process like?
During coronary angiography, the doctor induces a special dye into the bloodstream through your groin. The tube is threaded into your coronary arteries, and the dye is released into your bloodstream. X-ray pictures are taken as the dye continues flowing through the coronary arteries. Although femoral angioplasty was the first type of angioplasty practiced, it caused many problems for patients. Most common of them being- excessive bleeding, nerve damage, mild to severe pain and plenty of discomfort, not to forget the room for error.
Recovery time: 6-12 hours
Radial angioplasty on the other hand is a simpler, more accurate and less painful approach, and is therefore gaining more momentum when compared to the femoral approach.
What’s the process like?
Cardiologists access the heart’s arteries by placing the catheter through the radial artery (wrist) and move it through the body’s network of arteries and into the chest. Being smaller in size and easier to access, the radial artery enables surgeons to control the bleeding, while giving the patients easy accessibility to move around right after the procedure. The other benefits include lower costs and significantly lesser bleeding complications (by up to 6%), generating accurate results.
Recovery time: 0-2 hours
However, even though the blockage in the artery is removed, chances for reoccurrence are highly possible. To avoid this, stents were introduced.
Now, what is a Stent?
It is a small mesh kind of a tube that is placed in an artery, specially designed to reduce the risk of blockages from recurring. This tiny device is capable of treating even narrow and weak arteries and is found to be a true life saver!
The doctors at Narayana Health have gained the training and experience to handle working with the transradial and stenting approach, which is becoming the first choice for several patients due to the advantages it offers.