Coronary angioplasty AN-jee-o-plas-tee, also referred to as percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), is a procedure used to open clogged heart arteries. Angioplasty involves temporarily inserting and blowing up a tiny balloon where your artery is clogged to help widen the artery.
Angioplasty is often combined with the placement of a small metal coil called a stent in the clogged artery to help prop the artery open and decrease the chance of it narrowing.Angioplasty can improve some of the symptoms of blocked arteries, such as chest pain and shortness of breath. Angioplasty can also be used during a heart attack to quickly open a blocked artery and reduce the amount of damage to your heart.
The devices are deployed during angioplasty procedures, which are used to clear obstructed arteries in the heart. A catheter inserted into an artery in the patient’s groin is used to thread a balloon through the body to a blockage, in this case one of Mr. Clinton’s coronary arteries. After the balloon is inflated to clear the obstruction, the stent—which resembles a tiny mesh scaffold—is then put in place to prop open the diseased artery.
Since the first coronary stent was introduced by Johnson & Johnson in 1994, the technology has transformed treatment for coronary arteries, enabling millions of patients to avoid or delay undergoing bypass surgery. But their arrival has also sparked a controversy over whether cardiologists use them too soon or too often.
“Stents really represent the most contemporary care for patients” with the symptoms Mr. Clinton is reported to have experienced on Thursday, said Clyde Yancy, president of the American Heart Association and a cardiologist at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas.
Dr. Rihal emphasized the importance of heart patients taking preventative measures. Both bypass surgery and angioplasty “are very good,” he said, but patients “have got to take control of their risk factors and treat them as aggressively as possible.”
