Who Should Get a Heart Stent or Balloon Angioplasty?

Stent placement is a medical procedure in the category of interventional cardiology. Certain patient criteria determine who is advised to have a stent placed or to undergo balloon angioplasty. The aim is safer treatment for the patient. Curious? Read on to the end!

What Is Stent Placement?

Before looking at the criteria for patients advised to have a stent placed, it helps to know what stent placement is. Stent placement, also called Percutaneous Coronary Intervention, aims to widen the heart's coronary arteries.

A stent is a tube made of small woven metal mesh. It is inserted into a blocked blood vessel in the heart to prop the vessel open so that blood flows smoothly to the heart muscle. The stent is guided into the vessel with a catheter, a small plastic tube.

The tube is inserted through a blood vessel in the groin or the wrist. This type of cardiology intervention requires no surgery with large incisions and a long healing process. After the procedure, the patient is given a pressure bandage over the injection site for 4 to 6 hours.

What Are the Criteria for Patients Advised to Have a Stent Placed?

Several patient criteria apply. The first is a patient who has had a heart attack. Next are patients whose coronary arteries are narrowed by more than 60 percent, and patients with coronary heart disease in the Stable Angina Pectoris category.

This category is marked by chest pain that appears during certain activities and goes away with rest. Besides the categories above, stent placement is also advised for patients who are no longer young, since their organs may no longer be in good condition.

This cardiology intervention is meant to leave the patient feeling safer and more comfortable and to offer a higher recovery rate than open surgery. The procedure is also quicker, and so is the recovery.

Generally, patients are asked to take blood-thinning medication after the procedure to prevent the risk of clotting again. The medication can be reduced or stopped once the doctor allows it. Patients are also asked to drink water to flush the contrast dye out of the body.

These criteria exist to improve the chance that the doctor's procedure succeeds. Still, doctors weigh special considerations before recommending it to a patient.

Several specialist teams at Heartology have a range of expertise, including interventional cardiology. One of the doctors is Dr. Denio Adrianus Ridjab, Sp.JP (K), a cardiologist with a subspecialty in interventional cardiology who now practices at Heartology.