Is pulmonary artery catheterization safe?
Accurate measurements of the heart’s blood flow can help doctors treat people with severe congestive heart failure, but doctors haven’t known if one invasive measurement tool, pulmonary artery catheterization, is worth the risk. According to research published in the October 5 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, patients who undergo the procedure in which a catheter inserted into a blood vessel in the neck snakes a device into the chambers of the heart to measure blood pressure and flow experience neither significantly greater risk nor significantly greater benefit. Yet there are consequences from the procedure, both bad and good. Doctors at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and at Duke University studied 433 people with congestive heart failure, a condition that causes fluid to build up in the lungs, stomach, and legs and results in shortness of breath and profound fatigue. They found that PAC patients died or were hospitalized at the same rate as those who
