Outpatient Angioplasty More Common
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
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.Later, Focarile tells Senay, "It's much more comfortable (than when they did it in the groin), and it seems to be much quicker."
"The patients love it," Singh says, "It's much more comfortable. They don't have to lay flat. … They can get up. They can walk around. They can hang out with their families."
Eight hours later, Focarile is good to go.
"If it has to be done again," he exclaims, "this is the way to do it!"
Patients like Focarile take aspirin and blood-thinning medication right away to prevent complications, Senay says, and they come back the next day for a follow-up consultation to make sure they are recovering normally.
It's estimated that only about ten percent of patients who need angioplasty are candidates for the new procedure, she adds. It's not safe to try to repair complex conditions, in which the blockages are difficult to get to, on an outpatient basis.
"You really can't find (the new procedure) anywhere," Senay concludes. "You have to find people who are doing it. But I think we've turned a corner here and we're going to see this as a much more common approach to treating blocked heart arteries," she told The Early Show co-anchor Rene Syler.