Dr Naveen Bhamri is an Interventional Cardiologist at Max Hospital, Shalimar Bagh.
What does an Interventional Cardiologist do?
Interventional cardiology is a field of medicine that uses small tubes called catheters to find out what’s wrong with the heart and blood vessels and to treat them. They can escape open-heart surgery by putting these small tubes through your blood vessels and working with them. Still, they get results that can save people’s lives, like when they treat a heart attack.
What does a doctor who specialises in interventional heart do?
An interventional cardiologist is a doctor who is trained to use a catheter to do treatments on the heart and blood vessels. Some of these processes help them figure out what’s wrong, while others help them fix it.
What kinds of tests does an Interventional Cardiologist suggest?
The goal of interventional cardiology is to make sure your blood moves the way it should. In this area of heart, doctors find problems that stop your blood from flowing and fix them. For example, they may check your coronary vessels and heart chambers for blood flow and pressure.
Some examples of interventional cardiac tests are:
- CT scans of the heart arteries.
- Intracardiac ultrasound.
- MRI of the heart.
- X-ray of chest.
- What is a heart interventional procedure?
- With the help of a catheter, a provider does an interventional cardiac treatment on your heart. Instead of making cuts in your skin and doing surgery, they do this. An example of an interventional cardiac treatment is when a doctor uses a catheter to replace or fix a heart valve.
What kinds of treatments does a cardiologist who does interventions do?
Interventional treatments in cardiology include:
- catheterization of the heart.
- Angiogram (either of the arms or the heart).
- Angioplasty.
- Plaque removal through coronary atherectomy.
- Measurement of the fractional flow reserve (FFR).
- Intravascular ultrasound (IVUS).
- OCT stands for optical coherence tomography.
- Stent placement.
- Repair and replacement of heart valves.
- Left atrial duct closure.
- Atrial septal defect repair.
- Alcohol removal of the septum.
- Patent foramen ovale closing.
- Renal denervation is a way to lower blood pressure by hurting the nerves in the renal artery.
- Thrombolysis.
What is the treatment that interventional cardiologists do most often?
An angioplasty and stent placement in your coronary (heart) artery is the most common thing an interventional cardiologist does. In this minimally invasive treatment, a catheter is used to find a blockage in one of the arteries in your heart. Then, they make a path for your blood by pushing cholesterol against your artery wall with a tiny pump. If they need to, they can use a stent (a device made of wire mesh) to keep that path open. During a heart attack, the best way to save your life is to get blood flowing again to your heart.