Heart catheter | Diagnosis of a heart attack

Heart catheter

Left heart catheterization (cardiac catheterization) is the gold standard of imaging techniques in the diagnosis of myocardial infarction, as it allows the exact identification of occluded coronary vessels. This procedure is also called percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA): After puncturing an arterial vessel, a catheter (a kind of thin tube) is advanced to the left half of the heart. The coronary arteries (coronaries) are accessed from the aorta and an X-ray contrast medium is applied through the catheter.

This contrast medium is used to visualize the coronaries in the X-ray image (coronary angiography). In the event of a narrowing or occlusion of the coronary arteries, the X-rays produced provide the exact localization of the cause of the heart attack and make a targeted therapy possible. In the early phase of acute coronary syndrome, the diagnostic procedure can be combined with a revascularization procedure: A balloon is introduced into the vascular system via the catheter and advanced through the left heart to the coronary arteries.

At the narrowed vascular site, the balloon is expanded (balloon dilatation) and the vessel is dilated and thus made continuous again. A stent (tube-like grid) is often used to keep the vessel permanently open. A further measure to visualize the infarct is a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the heart, which makes it possible to localize the infarct at an early stage.