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Medical Author:

Charles Patrick Davis, MD, PhD

Charles Patrick Davis, MD, PhD

Dr. Charles "Pat" Davis, MD, PhD, is a board certified Emergency Medicine doctor who currently practices as a consultant and staff member for hospitals. He has a PhD in Microbiology (UT at Austin), and the MD (Univ. Texas Medical Branch, Galveston). He is a Clinical Professor (retired) in the Division of Emergency Medicine, UT Health Science Center at San Antonio, and has been the Chief of Emergency Medicine at UT Medical Branch and at UTHSCSA with over 250 publications.

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Medical Editor:

William C. Shiel Jr., MD, FACP, FACR

William C. Shiel Jr., MD, FACP, FACR

Dr. Shiel received a Bachelor of Science degree with honors from the University of Notre Dame. There he was involved in research in radiation biology and received the Huisking Scholarship. After graduating from St. Louis University School of Medicine, he completed his Internal Medicine residency and Rheumatology fellowship at the University of California, Irvine. He is board-certified in Internal Medicine and Rheumatology.

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Although over 95% of percutaneous coronary intervention procedures are successful, there are a few patients that still have problems. For example, sometimes the catheter (or its guide wire) cannot get through the narrowed lumen, or a thrombus (blood clot) forms at the site if the inner lining of the artery tears at the balloon site. Although agents are used to chemically prevent clot formations, not all treatments are successful. About 1%-2% of current percutaneous coronary intervention procedures fail and may require emergent CABG surgery (incidence of emergent CABG is 0.5% in high volume centers). The risk of a heart attack is about 1%-2% in people that have percutaneous coronary intervention.

Current percutaneous coronary intervention mortality is less than 1%. One large (905 patients) study reports an incidence of 6.7% patients develop a hematoma at the catheter entry site (groin or arm). Some patients may develop an aneurysm in the artery at the catheter entry site. Most patients will experience some bruising and tenderness at the catheter entry site.

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