Coronary Heart Disease – Coronary Angiogram

Transcript

Obviously the next test, if you have an abnormal nuclear test or an abnormal echo, a good story, or an abnormal exercise treadmill test, is a coronary angiogram. What is that? Angio meaning blood vessel, gram means study. An angiogram is where we inject some dye or contrast into the arteries of the heart and see how the blood moves. If the blood moves smoothly and the arteries look normal, then you don’t have any major obstructive coronary disease. You could still have microvascular disease. If you have a focal blockage, then the physician who’s doing the angiogram could intervene by putting a wire through and treat the blockage with balloon angioplasty and stents. Obviously, if the angiogram shows severe multi vessel blockages, then you might need treatment with a bypass.