From the Experts

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There are many tests and procedures in medicine, and specifically in cardiology, that require patients to take nothing by mouth (NPO) for several hours before the procedure. NPO has been the standard of care for cardiac cath since its...

[Editor's Note: This article was published in the September 2001 issue of Cath Lab Digest, and is being posted under September 2010 as a reader reference only) If we say that someone other than a cardiologist can and should perform a...

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The standard of care for patients with unprotected left main coronary artery (ULMCA) disease is coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) based largely on older, outdated data which demonstrate improved survival as compared with medical therapy...

Labs beginning radial artery procedures want to know, “What is the best way to set up the arm, drape, position the biplane tubes, and after the case, apply the hemostatic band?” How does your lab drape the arm and wrist for a radial case? ...

(Note: Please visit http://cathlabdigest.com/articles/Letter-Clinical-Editor to read this month's "Letters to the Clinical Editor." The letters missed the March print edition and will be published in the April edition).

We changed the daily tour of duty for our cath lab team. Instead of 10-hour days with one shift to run 2 labs, we split overlapping 8-hour shifts. This brought up the question, “Exactly how many people (and what kind of training) should you...

I asked my table of nurses from Venice, Florida, “What is the single biggest problem you have in your lab?” I was expecting comments like, “It’s the hemodynamics” or “I struggle with coronary anatomy” or “I don’t like covering the on-call...