What is "angioplasty"?

What is "angioplasty"?

Angioplasty is a procedure by which we can improve blood flow to the heart by widening the channel in a coronary artery that's partially blocked, sometimes even totally blocked. What we do during angioplasty is, if there's a blockage in the artery, we thread a tiny catheter up into the aorta (the main blood vessel). In angioplasty we thread it down from the artery in the leg into the artery right to the blockage, and right through that area of blockage so it's through that narrowed area. Around that catheter (a little tiny thin plastic tube) during angioplasty we have a little balloon. It's a longish balloon, at least a centimetre long, several centimetres sometimes. And during angioplasty we can then expand that balloon in the area where that artery is narrowed and that will squish the cholesterol (sort of more evenly distribute it), will stretch the artery a little bit, and when we take the balloon down, deflate it, and pull it back out after the angioplasty, we now have a wider channel through which blood can flow to supply the heart muscle.