Understanding Interventional Cardiology

Hi, I'm Alvaro Waissbluth.  I'm one of the heart doctors here.  I’m an interventional cardiologist.  What that means is I open up people's blocked heart arteries.

One of the components of the heart is the arteries that actually supply blood to the heart itself.  And, so when people get blockages in their heart arteries, an interventional cardiologist is the type of cardiologist that can open the blockages up - typically, with balloons and stents.

A lot of times people that have a blockage in the heart show up because they are having chest pain or jaw pain or elbow pain or chest tightness or chest pressure or chest ache, they - people describe it as a lot of different things and – or shortness of breath, and a lot of times, people don't have symptoms. 

The discomfort that you feel from the procedure is minimal. Number one, we put you to sleep, most people don't remember anything. The part that people might feel is when we numb up their leg because we numb up their leg to put tubes in their legs to go in the big arteries in their body and then to put all our catheters up inside their heart.  9 out of 10 people are asleep the whole time and then, then we let them drift awake and that's that. Typically, if you have a balloon or a stent placed in a heart artery, it's at least an overnight stay.  It used to be that after one of these, you'd have to spend 8 hours laying in a bed and now it's just 2 or 3 hours, most of the time.

There is an interventional team here that's ready and waiting.  If it's in the middle of the day, we're all physically here.  If it's in the middle of the night, we all get called on our beepers right away and drive here so that we're literally waiting for the patient.

We want to get the artery open as soon as possible, and that's why there is an interventional call team – it's just a whole set of people that come to take care of you when you have a heart attack.