with Saint Clare’s A Look Inside A High-Tech Cath Lab

By Mark J. Bonamo

An inside look into a high-tech cardiac catheterization lab, better known as a cath lab, can be both fascinating and life-saving. Dr. Barry Lowell, Medical Director of the Cardiac Catheterization Lab and Cardiac Rehab at Saint Clare’s Health, believes the updated cath lab at Saint Clare’s Health offers the highest quality and most advanced technology available, anywhere.

Understanding the treatments options inside a high-tech cardiac catheterization begins with the difference between elective angioplasty and emergent angioplasty.

Elective angioplasty is a minimally invasive procedure that involves a catheter, which is a flexible plastic tube. The catheter with a small balloon dilates, or “opens up”, a blocked artery that supplies your heart muscle with blood. The balloon compresses built-up plaque and creates a wider channel for blood to flow.

Emergency angioplasty is a life-saving procedure designed to open coronary artery blockages that are impeding proper blood flow to the heart.

“At Saint Clare’s Health, we have been performing emergency angioplasty for patients having heart attacks for many years. We quickly assemble an exceptional team to treat and open the arteries of people experiencing heart attacks. In that instance, a blood vessel on the heart is occluded generally with plaque and a clot. Within 90 minutes, we have the vessels open through angioplasty, and we cease any damage that may arise in a patient’s heart,” Dr. Lowell explained.

“Elective angioplasty is an exciting new addition to what we do. We have recently begun providing the same services electively for patients who are experiencing any type of coronary obstructive disorder, like angina or a small heart attack,” Dr. Lowell added. “We have learned that angioplasty of this nature is safe, and we are very comfortable providing these comprehensive services. The technologies have allowed us to safely treat people electively, and in most instances send them home on the very same day.”

The new technologies available at Saint Clare’s Health allow Dr. Lowell to treat his patients at the hospital in a way that is both local or around the corner from his patients, as well as ahead of the curve in providing advanced technology for critical heart procedures.

“From the 1990s onwards, we were working with balloons and then subsequently stents, and we were working under X-ray conditions. Today, our technologies provide us the opportunity to look directly inside the artery and characterize the nature of the blockage. Is it a flaw? Is there calcium? Is it just a single blockage or perhaps several?” Dr. Lowell queried. “We can use various different technologies which enables us to provide our patients with the safest and highest quality of care depending upon what we’re up against, and can readily choose another modality versus a stent, for example, if need be.” continued on page 12