Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Definition
By Mayo Clinic staffA coronary angiogram is a procedure that uses X-ray imaging to see the inside of your heart's blood vessels. Coronary angiograms are part of a general group of procedures known as cardiac catheterization.
Catheterization refers to any procedure in which a long, thin, flexible plastic tube (catheter) is inserted into your body. Heart catheter procedures can both diagnose and treat heart and blood vessel conditions. A coronary angiogram, which can help diagnose heart conditions, is the most common type of heart catheter procedure.
During a coronary angiogram, a type of dye that's visible by X-ray machine is injected into the blood vessels of your heart. The X-ray machine rapidly takes a series of images (angiograms), offering a detailed look at the inside of your blood vessels. If necessary, your doctor can perform procedures such as angioplasty during your coronary angiogram.
- Eastwood J. Nurse's role in the cardiac catheterization laboratory. In: Moser DK, et al. Cardiac Nursing: A companion to Braunwald's heart disease. Philadelphia, Pa.: Saunders Elsevier; 2007:339.
- Barbara Woodward Lips Patient Education Center. About your heart-catheter procedures. Rochester, Minn.: Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research; 2005.
- Angiogram. Society for Vascular Surgery. http://www.vascularweb.org/patients/NorthPoint/Angiogram.html. Accessed Jan. 27, 2009.
- Cardiac catheterization. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/dci/Diseases/cath/cath_all.html. Accessed Jan. 27, 2009.
- Coronary angiography. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/dci/Diseases/ca/ca_all.html. Accessed Jan. 27, 2009.
- Kern MJ, et al. Physiological Assessment of Coronary Artery Disease in the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory. Circulation. 2006;114:1321.
Find Mayo Clinic on