Atherectomy
During a cardiac angioplasty procedure, the catheterization team may need to create an opening through coronary arterial plaque in order to remove this blockage and to provide an opening for a balloon-tipped catheter to further expand the artery's opening. The specialists will use one of a number of types of highly engineered catheters for this purpose. In some cases, these catheters have a specially cooled laser tip to vaporize the blockage in a carefully controlled manner or a tiny rotary tip that cuts through the plaque material.
The team can exactly monitor the progress of atherectomy using the catheterization laboratory's fluoroscopic imaging. Once the team achieves an initial opening in the artery, it uses a balloon-tipped catheter to fully remodel the narrowed area. Circulation is immediately restored to the area of the heart wall to which the coronary artery supplies blood.
