“We should not be afraid of these procedures, neither we doctors nor patients,” said Wojciech Dworzański, head of the Hemodynamics Laboratory at Radom Specialist Hospital and a professor at Radom University.
“Act in time, because in cardiology prevention and early action matter.”
Dworzański said coronary angiography and angioplasty should not be treated as last-resort options.
Coronary angiography is a diagnostic test in which a doctor threads a thin tube, or catheter, into an artery, injects contrast dye, and records images to see blockages in the coronary arteries.
Angioplasty is a treatment, often done immediately after angiography reveals a narrowing, in which a balloon, and usually a stent, is used to restore blood flow and prevent a heart attack.
He noted that some physicians still postpone sending patients for these procedures, waiting until medication fails.
“Research and practice show that with heart disease, time does not work in the patient’s favor,” he said. “An improperly treated patient ends up with a heart attack.”
Rapid detection starts with primary care, he added. A careful checkup, including listening to the heart and asking about family history, can catch problems early, even in younger adults.
He urged doctors to take seriously symptoms such as chest pain, reduced exercise capacity, and unusual fatigue, and to ask about relatives with heart disease.
He said his team recently treated a 30-year-old with atypical chest pain whose critically narrowed artery was found on angiography. Despite intervention, the patient died days later from a rare complication. “Such stories break our hearts,” Dworzański said.
He listed the main drivers of heart disease beyond congenital conditions as sedentary lifestyles, smoking, high blood pressure, poor diet that raises cholesterol, and continuous stress.
Many people, he said, are unaware they have high blood pressure or elevated cholesterol, or they blame an episode on stress, coffee or yesterday’s fast food.
At that stage, he advised, lifestyle measures are important, and medication to control blood pressure and lower cholesterol is often necessary.
Cardiologists then order tests such as an echocardiogram, a stress test, and, depending on results, a prompt “scout” angiography.
Dworzański emphasized that angiography and angioplasty have become standard worldwide over the past two decades and are closely linked.
He said the quality of care in Poland is high, pointing to the country’s position among European leaders for low 30-day mortality after heart attack, about 5.5 percent, according to data he cited.
He credited an extensive network of hemodynamics units working around the clock in most major specialist hospitals. These catheterization laboratories, commonly called CathLabs, receive heart attack patients directly.
He said there are about 70 such centers in Poland that perform both angiography and angioplasty.
In Radom, a city south of Warsaw, there are two CathLabs, one in each specialist hospital, and both are busy. At Radom Specialist Hospital alone, staff carry out roughly 2,500 angiographies and angioplasties a year.
He stressed the importance of the “golden hour,” the window in which a person with heart attack symptoms should reach specialist care.
“If it is even the ‘golden 90 minutes,’ there will most likely be no damage to the heart and no complications,” he said.
The longer a vessel remains blocked and the heart muscle lacks oxygen, the larger the area of dead tissue and the worse the outlook. He added that outcomes remain good even for many who arrive within six hours, though complications are more common.
“This is no longer about shortcomings in the health service,” Dworzański said of heart attack survival. “We, meaning the ambulance service and the hemodynamics lab, can meet the 90-minute target, provided the patient seeks help immediately after symptoms appear.”
He urged the public to learn the warning signs and call an ambulance without delay. Concerning symptoms include strong chest pain or pressure described as squeezing, burning, tightness, or crushing that does not go away with rest or a sip of water.
The pain may spread to the left arm, shoulder, jaw, back, both shoulders, or the upper abdomen. Early action, he said, gives modern cardiology the chance to do what it does best: open blocked arteries quickly and protect the heart.
(rt/gs)
Source: naukawpolsce.pl