Angioplasty, also known as balloon angioplasty and percutaneous transluminal angioplasty (PTA), is a minimally invasive endovascular procedure used to widen narrowed or obstructed arteries or veins, typically to treat arterial atherosclerosis. A deflated balloon attached to a catheter is passed over a guide-wire into the narrowed vessel and then inflated to a fixed size. The balloon forces expansion of the blood vessel and the surrounding muscular wall, allowing an improved blood flow. A stent may be inserted at the time of ballooning to ensure the vessel remains open, and the balloon is then deflated and withdrawn. Angioplasty has come to include all manner of vascular interventions that are typically performed percutaneously.
Harefield is a village in the London Borough of Hillingdon, England, 17 miles (27 km) northwest of Charing Cross near Greater London's boundary with Buckinghamshire to the west and Hertfordshire to the north. The population at the 2011 Census was 7,399. Harefield is the westernmost settlement in Greater London.
Interventional cardiology is a branch of cardiology that deals specifically with the catheter based treatment of structural heart diseases. Andreas Gruentzig is considered the father of interventional cardiology after the development of angioplasty by interventional radiologist Charles Dotter.
Andreas Roland Grüntzig was a German radiologist and cardiologist, with foundational interest, training and research in epidemiology and angiology. He is known for being the first to develop successful balloon angioplasty for expanding lumens of narrowed arteries. He was born in Dresden.
Sir Magdi Habib Yacoub, is an Egyptian retired professor of cardiothoracic surgery at Imperial College London, best known for his early work in repairing heart valves with surgeon Donald Ross, adapting the Ross procedure, where the diseased aortic valve is replaced with the person's own pulmonary valve, devising the arterial switch operation (ASO) in transposition of the great arteries, and establishing the heart transplantation centre at Harefield Hospital in 1980 with a heart transplant for Derrick Morris, who at the time of his death was Europe's longest-surviving heart transplant recipient. Yacoub subsequently performed the UK's first combined heart and lung transplant in 1983.
Derrick Morris was, at the time of his death, Europe's longest-surviving heart transplant recipient, living 25 years after the transplant performed by Sir Magdi Yacoub in 1980. He died from an illness that was not heart or transplant related.
Royal Brompton Hospital is the largest specialist heart and lung medical centre in the United Kingdom. It is managed by Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust.
Percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) is a non-surgical procedure used to treat narrowing of the coronary arteries of the heart found in coronary artery disease. The process involves combining coronary angioplasty with stenting, which is the insertion of a permanent wire-meshed tube that is either drug eluting (DES) or composed of bare metal (BMS). The stent delivery balloon from the angioplasty catheter is inflated with media to force contact between the struts of the stent and the vessel wall, thus widening the blood vessel diameter. After accessing the blood stream through the femoral or radial artery, the procedure uses coronary catheterization to visualise the blood vessels on X-ray imaging. After this, an interventional cardiologist can perform a coronary angioplasty, using a balloon catheter in which a deflated balloon is advanced into the obstructed artery and inflated to relieve the narrowing; certain devices such as stents can be deployed to keep the blood vessel open. Various other procedures can also be performed.
Royal Papworth Hospital is a specialist heart and lung hospital, located on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus in Cambridgeshire, England. The Hospital is run by Royal Papworth Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.
The history of invasive and interventional cardiology is complex, with multiple groups working independently on similar technologies. Invasive and interventional cardiology is currently closely associated with cardiologists, though the development and most of its early research and procedures were performed by diagnostic and interventional radiologists.
Lourdes Heart Institute and Neuro Centre (LHINC) is a new block set up in Lourdes Hospital, Cochin, Kerala, India, to cater to tertiary level care for the entire spectrum of cardiovascular and neurological disease. It was inaugurated on 16 March 2007, by Mr. A. K. Antony, the Defence Minister of India. This institute was started to meet a long-felt need to provide cardiac and neurological interventional facilities, and especially to provide interventional neurological facilities for the treatment of strokes, including selective thrombolysis and primary angioplasty for stroke which was hitherto unavailable in this part of India.
A coronary stent is a tube-shaped device placed in the coronary arteries that supply blood to the heart, to keep the arteries open in the treatment of coronary heart disease. It is used in a procedure called percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). Coronary stents are now used in more than 90% of PCI procedures. Stents reduce angina and have been shown to improve survival and decrease adverse events in an acute myocardial infarction.
Reperfusion therapy is a medical treatment to restore blood flow, either through or around, blocked arteries, typically after a heart attack. Reperfusion therapy includes drugs and surgery. The drugs are thrombolytics and fibrinolytics used in a process called thrombolysis. Surgeries performed may be minimally-invasive endovascular procedures such as a percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), which involves coronary angioplasty. The angioplasty uses the insertion of a balloon and/or stents to open up the artery. Other surgeries performed are the more invasive bypass surgeries that graft arteries around blockages.
Ulrich Sigwart is a German retired cardiologist known for his pioneering role in the conception and clinical use of stents to keep blood vessels open, and introducing a non-surgical intervention, alcohol septal ablation for the treatment of hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy.
Gilles Dreyfus is a French cardiac surgeon.
The Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Foundation Trust was an NHS foundation trust which ran the Royal Brompton Hospital in Kensington and Harefield Hospital in Hillingdon, London, England.
Dr R Ravi Kumar graduated from Stanley Medical College and obtained the FRCS from Edinburgh. He worked at the Harefield Hospital, UK, under Sir Magdi Yacoub involving himself with adult cardiac surgery including heart and lung transplant and aortic homografts. Dr Ravi Kumar then underwent surgical residency in Boston, MA, United States. Following this he worked with Dr Albert Starr in Portland, Oregon. He pursued his cardiothoracic residency at the University of Texas, South Western Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, U.S. He continued at the same institution as an advanced fellow in Heart & Lung Transplant and is UNOS, certifiable for Heart & Lung Transplant.
Healthcare in London, which consumes about a fifth of the NHS budget in England, is in many respects distinct from that in the rest of the United Kingdom, or England.
Rosemary Radley-Smith was a British paediatric cardiologist who worked at Harefield Hospital, west London for many years and founded several charities. In 2001, she received the Pride of Britain Award.
Alfredo E. Rodríguez is an Argentine interventional cardiologist, clinical researcher, and author. He is the Chief of Interventional Cardiology Service at Otamendi Hospital and Director and Founder of the Cardiovascular Research Center (CECI) a non -profit Research Organization in Buenos Aires Argentina.
