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A new advanced catheter used to place guide wires in arteries near the heart for stenting and angioplasty procedures probably will reduce the number of patients who need bypass surgery by about 2 percent, says Dr. Donald Canaday, an interventional cardiologist at Inland Cardiology Associates PS, of Spokane.
Called the Venture Catheter, the device gives cardiologists "a very steerable" tool to direct wires through difficult-to-reach coronary arteries that are 80 percent to 90 percent blocked, says Canaday.
He predicts that one or two of the roughly 50 cardiac stent and angioplasty procedures performed each week at Sacred Heart Medical Center will use the Venture Catheter.
The device doesn't change the overall medical procedure significantly. What it does, however, is provide guide-wire access to an area of the artery where conventional approaches can't reach, allowing for less-invasive stent or angioplasty procedures to be done instead of open-heart bypass surgery, Canaday says.
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