Outpatient Angioplasty More Common

By: Brian Dakss

About 600,000 heart patients a year undergo angioplasty to unclog blocked arteries in the United States.

Now, reports The Early Show medical correspondent Dr. Emily Senay, advances in the way the procedure is done enable some patients to recover much more quickly and with less chance of complications. Many even get to leave the hospital the same day.

In the first installment of the annual, weeklong "Heartscore" series, Senay describes the state of the art in angioplasty.

She visits New York-Presbyterian Hospital, where Joe Focarile has returned, for a procedure to relieve the debilitating chest pain caused by another clogged heart artery.

"It's a strong pain," he tells Senay. "It paralyzes you."

Dr. Varinder Singh is about to perform Focarile's third angioplasty, threading a small catheter into his heart and expanding a balloon to push open the clogged artery, then placing a stent there to keep it open.

The procedure usually requires an overnight stay, but this time, Singh is using a different approach, threading the catheter in through the wrist instead of the groin, which reduces the risk of complications.

"Basically," he explains, "the same catheter we introduce into the groin artery, we are going to introduce into the radial artery (in the wrist). … It gives us the opportunity to have easy control of the bleeding, and for that reason, the patients don't necessarily have to stay overnight."

Within minutes, Singh locates the blockage and, within an hour, the stent is placed and the problem is solved.