BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE There are concerns that cardiac catheterization may cause retinal embolization, a risk marker for cerebrovascular emboli and stroke. We describe the incidence of acute retinal embolism after cardiac catheterization. METHODS One hundred unselected patients attending a tertiary referral center for diagnostic cardiac catheterization were recruited. Digital retinal photogra...

BACKGROUND Women and minorities traditionally have shown less use of diagnostic cardiac catheterization. We sought to determine whether mobile cardiac catheterization laboratories may increase the use of catheterization among women and minorities by bringing the technology to remote communities. METHODS We collected data on consecutive patients undergoing cardiac catheterization at mobile lab...

OBJECTIVE Preprocedure meetings have become more commonplace in medicine but are not performed routinely in the cardiac catheterization laboratory. We sought to create, implement, and evaluate a preprocedural meeting in the form of a checklist for the cardiac catheterization laboratory. Staff attitudes and perceptions toward safety and sense of teamwork were also analyzed. DESIGN All procedur...

Background: Brachial artery spasms may occur during transradial cardiac catheterization. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between brachial artery spasms after transradial cardiac catheterization and coronary artery disease. Methods: Two hundred and forty-one patients who received transradial cardiac catheterization for diagnosis of coronary artery disease were enrolled ...

1 Cardiac catheterization has transformed the management of pediatric cardiac disease, as the indications for pediatric catheterization are broad and far-reaching.1–3 Cardiac catheterization, however, is not without risk. In pediatric patients, the rate of complications ranges from 7.8% to 16.2%.1,5–9 The most common complication is vascular injury, which accounts for nearly one third of all co...

Diagnostic cardiac catheterization is recommended whenever it is clinically important to define the presence of cardiac disease that cannot be evaluated adequately by noninvasive techniques. Because the risk of a major complication from cardiac catheterization is less than 1% with mortality of less than 0.08%, many doctors can perform the catheterization safely now. We discuss the history of co...