In medicine, a catheter is a tube that a health professional may insert into part of the body. The process of inserting a catheter is catheterization. In most uses it is a thin, flexible tube: a "soft" catheter; in some, it is a larger, solid tube: a "hard" catheter.
Placement of a catheter into a particular part of the body may allow:
injection of dye or radio_opaque contrast into blood vessels or other structures to visualize abnormalities, as in cardiac catheterization, which is part of coronary angiography
suctioning of unwanted fluids from the airway (with a hard catheter)
A central line is a conduit for giving drugs or fluids into a large-bore catheter positioned either in a vein near the heart or just inside the atrium.
Cardiac catheterization can be used to determine pressure and blood flow in the heart's chambers, collect blood samples from the heart, and examine the arteries of the heart with an x-ray technique called fluoroscopy.
Cardiac catheterization is usually performed to evaluate heart valves, heart function and blood supply, or heart abnormalities in newborns.
Therapeutic catheterization may be used to repair certain types of heart defects, open a stenotic heart valve, and open blocked arteries or grafts in the heart.
Feeds |
Contact