cardiology: cath lab

I'm a bit frustrated with this rotation, as nothing is expected of me. However, I did get to spend a whole day in the cath lab after I requested it.

It was an interesting day. For the most part, it was placement of stents and pacemakers.  It was almost like a mini operating room. The interventional cardiologist confessed to me that he actually wanted to be a cardiothoracic surgeon but knew since he was an international medical grad, he became a interventional cardiologist. He said that now he is happy, not only does he like his job, but fewer and fewer cardio surgeries are happening these days.  Most people opt to have procedures done by him, with all the advances in technology, as opposed to getting surgery.  So his business is booming. These pictures are him at work. He doesn't have to boast about how good he is at his job because his reputation proceeds him. Almost everyone in the hospital knows how good he is.

I got to see it first hand, when the ER called. A lady was complaining of chest pain, and her EKG showed she was having a heart attack. When a heart catheterization occurs, the doctor makes a small whole in the leg and inserts a small wire tube through your artery all the way to you heart.  We inject dye and take pictures of your heart, watching the dye be pumped through.  This is how we identify which arteries to your heart are blocked. Then the doctor inserts a stent, a metal wire mesh to hold open your artery, as pictured here.  Stents are a genius invention, a way to keep the heart beating despite what you have eaten and how much you haven't exercised.  But for all the genius of the stent, it is only a bandaid. I think I've posted before about how disappointing it is to know that even tho this wire is holding your artery open, it didn't fix the blockage, it just smashed the cholesterol against the sides. Its not really a permanent fix, but then I guess I don't know what is in medicine anymore.

In the end, it was an educational day. Repetively seeing both emergent and non-emergent pacemakers and stents. I understand now what happens to my patients as they go through heart problems and fixes.  But I also saw that I don't really want to be a cardiologist, exactly like what I learned in my Anesthesiology rotation. *sigh* I'm sorry if I repeated what I had already said there, but it surprises me how much of a waste this rotation was for me. I am sad that I did not learn any new information.