CATHETERIZATION
Once destined for surgery, a
number of patients with heart defects now can be treated
with interventional, or therapeutic, cardiac
catheterization procedures.
At Texas Children’s Heart Center, the only area facility to
offer such a service for infants, children and
adolescents, approximately half of the nearly 350
catheterization procedures performed annually are
therapeutic. The remaining 300 procedures are diagnostic.
For certain cardiac defects, an interventional cardiac
catheterization procedure can achieve the same result as
an operation, and procedures can be performed in concert
with surgery to help make the surgery more directed and
effective..
With
diagnostic catheterization, a small catheter, which
resembles a long straw, is advanced into the heart through
a large vein. A vein in an arm or leg usually is chosen.
The catheter is directed into each heart chamber to
measure the pressure, check the oxygen amount and inject
dye to photograph the heart. This information is used to
better determine the child’s cardiac abnormalities and
decide if surgery is needed.
Using the same technique, the
cardiologist can manipulate special catheters through the
heart chambers. These interventional procedures include
opening heart valves which are closed or impeded; closing
abnormal blood vessels and connections in the heart, arteries
and veins; and closing holes in the heart.
In
some patients, holes can be made in the heart to
decompress the pressure in one of the chambers.
Although
therapeutic cardiac catheterization for children was
pioneered in the early 1970s, it was not until the
mid-to-late 1980s that these procedures occurred
regularly.
In some ways, therapeutic catheterization is a young field. The child receives intravenous
sedation during the cardiac catheterization. The patient
may go home that evening or the next morning.
The
child often resumes normal activities and is back at
school within a day.
