Angioplasty

Southcoast's Charlton Memorial Hospital is one of the first community hospitals in Massachusetts to offer elective angioplasty services.

Specially trained cardiologists perform angioplasties in our cardiac cath labs. A catheter with a tiny balloon is guided to a blood vessel blockage and the balloon is gently inflated, opening the blockage and restoring blood flow to the heart. A stent — which resembles a tiny, flexible scaffold — is often left in place to keep the vessel from closing again.

These procedures are performed by specially trained interventional cardiologists, who practice both in our region and in major teaching hospitals in Boston and Providence.

Both Charlton and St. Luke's Hospital have offered angioplasty services in recent years on an emergency basis. The expansion of these services is part of the hospital's new open heart surgery program, which has brought lifesaving cardiac services to the South Coast.

Southcoast currently performs more cardiac catheterizations than any community hospital system in Massachusetts, with approximately 60 percent of patients being referred for advanced treatment such as coronary artery bypass or angioplasty.

"The need for advanced cardiac services in the South Coast region is expected to grow substantially, mainly due to the prevalence of heart disease and our aging population," said cardiologist Jonathan D. Bier, MD, Director of Southcoast's Interventional Cardiology Services. "Keeping in step with this increase in demand, Southcoast will be able to offer more technologically advanced interventional procedures such as drug-eluting stents."

Did you know ...

Your heart is your body's tireless mechanical pump - circulating 75 gallons of blood each hour into a circulatory system of arteries and veins that, if stretched end-to-end, would be 12,400 miles long. It's the engine of life!