Coronary angiography - a minimally invasive procedure designed to study the coronary arteries and heart chambers. It is performed as a diagnostic and therapeutic purposes.
Coronary angiography is one of the procedures in cardiac surgery. This method allows you to visualize changes in coronary vessels such as clogging, narrowing, re-narrowing, thrombosis or aneurysmal enlargement of the lumen of these vessels, the size of the heart chambers, contractility of cardiac muscle, as well as some aspects of the functioning of the heart valves. In addition, this method allows to determine such important parameters of the heart as the blood pressure in the cavities of the heart and pulmonary arteries, which can not be done non-invasive methods.
Narrowing of the coronary artery blood flow to the violation of heart tissue that forms the basis for the symptoms of angina. Blockage of an artery leads to myocardial infarction. However, coronary catheterization can not recognize whether the walls of blood vessels affected by atherosclerosis or not, but a significant narrowing of their lumen, which occurs in the final stages of atherosclerosis.
