Q. Can you explain Coronary Angioplasty?

The concept of coronary angioplasty - enlargement of the lumen of a stenotic vessel by a catheter technique was first proposed by Dotter and Judkins in 1964. The concept was to advance a guidewire over a stenotic lesion. This would serve as a rail over which progressively larger inflatable non-elastic balloons could be passed and the lesion could progressively be dilated till the lumen of the narrowed segment of the coronary artery is opened. The first percutaneous coronary angioplasty was performed on a conscious patient on Sept. 16, 1977. The success rate of PTCA is 98 per cent and the requirement for emergency CABG is 1 per cent and procedural mortality is 1 per cent. Much of the success of the technique is due to improvements in technology, stents, and advancements in anticoagulant and antiplatelet therapy.